The Road to Recovery
by jahacopo2221
Summary: Set somewhere early Season 14-ish and will diverge from canon at that point. Elliot Stabler has been gone from SVU and Olivia's life for almost a year and a half. He had become a ghost, a memory in the minds of his colleagues, and an aching hole in the heart of his former partner. What happens when a devastating event brings him out of obscurity and back into their lives?
1. Chapter 1: The Emergency Room

**Summary: Set somewhere early Season 14-ish and will diverge from canon at that point. The William Lewis story arc has not happened yet (and may not).**

**Elliot Stabler has been gone from SVU and Olivia's life for almost a year and a half. He had become a ghost, a memory in the minds of his colleagues, and an aching hole in the heart of his former partner. What happens when a devastating event brings him out of obscurity and back into their lives? Will be E/O. Rating T because try as I might, I can't write smut, and also because I'm trying to keep it as close to the style of the show, which is generally rated TV-14. **

**Chapter One: The Emergency Room**

**Mercy General Hospital**

A crew of FDNY paramedics rushed through the doors of the ambulance bay at Mercy General Hospital. There was chaos all around as they relayed information about the patient on the stretcher to the trauma team that was waiting for them.

"We have a female Jane Doe, unknown age. Was involved in a multi-car MVA. She was the backseat passenger in a taxicab that took multiple impacts. Impact number one was broadside to the driver's side, causing the vehicle to spin into oncoming traffic. Impact number two happened almost immediately after and was broadside to the passenger side, causing the vehicle to flip. Taxi driver was DOA on the scene. Patient Jane Doe had to be extricated from the vehicle. She was pinned in on both sides and from the roof of the car. Witnesses reported that she appeared to have been restrained, but the extrication crew reported that the belt was broken, possibly from the force of the impacts. Time to extricate was approximately 30 minutes from the first 911 call. Patient has been unconscious since EMS arrived on scene, but witnesses did report that she was conscious and moaning briefly after the accident.

"Pupils are round and reactive, pulse is tachy at 140, BP is 95/50. A large bore IV was inserted into left AC vein, one liter of fluids pushed. There are some first and second degree burns to lower extremities. The vehicle caught fire at the tail end of the extrication. Shortly thereafter, the vehicle's fuel tank ignited and flames engulfed the car. It was quickly extinguished but not before most of her personal effects were incinerated. This is what we were able to recover."

The paramedic handed over a small, plastic bag containing a charred bit of metal, a half burnt belt fused to a melted chunk of plastic, and some fragments of blackened card stock, one of which clearly bore the NYPD logo.

"We think Jane Doe is an NYPD officer. It's possible that piece of metal might be her badge or a piece of it. A burnt out 9mm Glock was also found at the scene and secured by NYPD personnel until provenance can be ascertained."

The lead trauma nurse nodded her understanding of all and thanks the paramedics as she and the rest of the trauma team take over and begin assessing what promised to be a long list of injuries.

The on-call trauma surgeon started barking out orders. "Get a portable x-ray in here stat! We need C-spine, pelvic, and all extremities. Call up to CT and let them know we are coming up. Tell them to bump whoever's in there; she's critical. Call up to the OR and let them know to prep for an emergency ex-lap. Page Neurology to assess the head injury, and Ortho for the fractures. Be prepared to initiate damage control protocol. We might not be able to take care of everything right away if she goes into the triad of death. Type and cross at least 3 units of blood."

Members of the trauma team rushed in and out, a swirl of activity in a well-rehearsed dance. One nurse glanced at the patient's face as she drew the blood for the lab work. A wave of recognition washed over her. She remembered this woman. She had seen her come and go from the ER countless times, interviewing sexual assault victims. She raised her voice above the din.

"I think I know who the patient is. I'm pretty sure that she is a detective with the NYPD. She works with Manhattan SVU. I think her name is Olivia Benson."


	2. Chapter 2: The Phone Call

**Obligatory Disclaimer: I don't own these characters or anything in the SVU universe. It's Dick Wolf's playground and I'm just playing in it. **

**A/N: I'm just venturing back into FanFiction after a looooooong time and I'm a little rusty, so bear with me, please. This story has run through my head every night for a couple weeks so I decided to write it all down. I forgot how pages and pages of handwritten text end up quite short when typed out, so I apologize for the length of the first few chapters I have already written. I promise to try and do better. With that said, on with the show!**

**Chapter Two: The Phone Call**

**NYPD 16th Precinct, Manhattan SVU squad room**

Captain Donald Cragen walked into the squad room and surveyed the scene. The overnight crew were finishing up their work and the day shift was gearing up. Detectives Fin and Munch were exchanging their usual banter about one of John's conspiracy theories, over Munch's famous burnt coffee. Detectives Rollins and Amaro were by Nick's desk with their heads bent together over something. '_Just another typical SVU morning," _he thought to himself.

He headed into his office to gather everything he needed for their morning case rundown. Just as he was about to walk out of his office, the phone on his desk rang. Sighing, he put his files and coffee down on the desk and picked up the handset.

"Manhattan SVU, this is Captain Cragen. How can I help you?"

"Captain, this is Celia Porter. I'm a trauma nurse in the ER at Mercy General. We've had an unidentifiable patient come in who is in extremely critical condition at this time. We need to notify her family and/or her emergency contact. We're calling you because we have made a tentative identification but we need someone from your unit to make a formal identification and hopefully help fill in the patient's past medical history."

"Okay, I understand, but how does this pertain to my unit? Was the patient a victim of a sexual assault that we need to investigate?"

"No sir," came the voice on the other end. "The patient has been tentatively identified as a detective in your unit..."

As the nurse was speaking, Cragen's eyes snapped up and he once again surveyed the scene outside his office. Fin, Munch, Rollins, Amaro, ... His eyes darted to an empty desk—no jacket on the chair, no mug of tea sitting next to the computer. Monitor dark. Papers stacked neatly and not spread across the desk... His many years as a detective catching all this in a second, and he processed that information almost as quickly, so when the nurse said, "Olivia Benson," he murmured her name at the same time. With shaking hands, thumping heart, and what could only be described as a queasy feeling in his stomach, he quickly gathered information on her current status (critical in the OR) and promised to immediately come down and make the formal identification, as well as notifying whomever Olivia had authorized in her file. He knew that if they needed a formal identification that Olivia had been unconscious since EMS picked her up. What had happened to the detective he looked upon as the daughter he never had?

He ducked his head out of his doorway and shouted, "Fin, Munch, I need you in here, now!" The two detectives looked at each other, wondering what they had done now. Amaro and Rollins jibed them good-naturedly as they walked into the office.

When the two men entered, they observed the Captain rifling through his file cabinet, muttering something unintelligible under his breath. John noticed that the normally unflappable Captain's hands were shaking. Both detectives could sense that Captain Cragen was very distressed about something.

Cragen found the file he was looking for. He opened it up and quickly looked to the form detailing emergency contact and next of kin information. In their line of work, this was an unfortunate necessity to keep immediately at hand. Olivia had evidently never updated her NOK after connecting with her half-brother, so that section was blank. But her emergency contact...it was just as Cragen expected it would be.

He looked up at his two veteran detectives, men he knew would do anything and everything possible to help Olivia. He cleared his throat and told them, "Olivia has been injured in some sort of manner. I didn't get all of the details from the trauma nurse. She is in very critical condition at Mercy. They don't know if she's going to make it. They need a formal identification because for some reason she didn't have any ID on her and she's been unconscious since EMS picked her up. A nurse in the ER happened to recognize her, but they need an official identification from somebody who actually knows her. I'm going down to Mercy right now to make that ID. So, I need you two to find and notify her emergency contact.

He handed the open file over to Munch, while Fin looked over his partner's shoulder. They looked up at the same time.

"How?" asked Fin. "He hasn't returned any of our calls. Liv says the family doesn't even live in the house in Queens anymore. He's completely off the grid to us."

"Try Hudson University. A birdie told me that he had taken on an adjunct professorship there, teaching Criminal Justice and Victimology. Don't try and call; there's no time for that, especially if he's in class at the moment. Go there. Find him. Track him down. If he's not at the school, find out from someone there where he lives. Then all three of you haul ass to Mercy, using lights and sirens. Handcuff and drag him if you have to, but I think when you tell him what's going on, that he will be the one dragging you two."

Fin and Munch nodded, accepting their mission and understanding that time was extremely critical. "Let's go collect Stabler," John said.

Captain Cragen watched the two men gather their jackets and the squad car keys. He would follow them out the door as soon as he made a quick call to 1PP to apprise them of the situation.

Phone call completed, he gathered his things and locked his office. He met the confused eyes of his two junior detectives, who were extremely curious as to what was happening. Fin and Munch had been called in to the office and then quickly rushed out looking like the hounds of hell were chasing them; now the Captain was clearly about to leave and the day had just barely started. They hadn't even had their morning briefing.

Cragen announced there had been a 'family emergency' and that he was leaving to take care of it. He put Amaro in charge and left the precinct.

Amanda and Nick looked at each other. "Family emergency?" Amanda asked. "He doesn't have any family...does he?"

"I don't think so. And that definitely doesn't address whatever is going on with Munch and Fin."

They looked over to see what Olivia thought, also wondering why the Captain hadn't left her in charge—she was the most senior detective after the Captain and Munch. It was then that they noticed Olivia was not there and by the looks of things, hadn't been all morning.

The two junior detectives began to draw lines between Liv's absence, Fin and Munch's abrupt departure, and the Captain's 'family emergency'. Something was up with Olivia Benson but for the life of them, they couldn't figure out what it was.

Two unies walked in and headed to the coffee bar, chatting about their morning so far. "Hey, do you know anyone who worked that MVA this morning? I've been watching the news, with those crazy eyewitness videos, waiting to see if they'll release any information about the occupants in that cab. That thing was absolutely demolished."

His partner replied, "A buddy of mine in FDNY says that he heard they though the passenger in the cab was an MOS. The driver was DOA..." The two men moved on, continuing their conversation as they strolled out the squad room.

Nick and Amanda both moved to switch the squad room's television to the local news. They weren't positive, but they had a sinking feeling that the fourth piece of their puzzle had just been handed to them.

A/N Pt. 2: Please review and keep my muse's flame burning, even if it does keep me up at night! The next chapter is going to be really short, I'm sorry, but the one after that promises to be a doozy. It's already eleven handwritten pages long and I'm not even halfway done with it. For comparison, this chapter is seven handwritten pages.


	3. Chapter 3: Finding Elliot

**Obligatory Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, the SVU universe, or much of anything else, actually. I do own this plot line that keeps me awake at night. Dick Wolf owns the L&O:SVU world. **

**A/N: Here's the awfully short chapter I promised last night. The original plan was to merge it with the next chapter, but since that chapter is shaping up to be massive and also doesn't flow as well given what's covered in either chapter, I decided to split them, making this scene short. Just think of it as one of those brief times between commercial breaks. :)**

**Chapter Three: Finding Elliot**

**Hudson University**

**Office of the President**

The two detectives sent in search of the elusive Elliot Stabler walked into the Hudson University Administration Office, seeking out someone in charge who could help direct them to Elliot's whereabouts. They found themselves in the office of the university's president, where they had been ushered after identifying themselves to the secretary in the outer office.

"Good morning. I'm Sergeant Munch, and this is my partner, Detective Tutuola, with the NYPD," as he briefly flashes his badge. "We need information on the whereabouts of a member of your faculty, urgently. This is a life-or-death matter."

"Of course, officers. For whom are you looking?" replied Andrew Williams, the university's president.

"Elliot Stabler. We believe that he is an adjunct professor in Criminal Justice," replied Munch.

"Ah, yes, of course! He's one of our most popular professors already and he's only been here one semester. We're actually planning on offering him a tenure-track position. Let me see if I can find out if he's in class now."

"Carol," he calls out to the secretary who had admitted them into the office, "can you find out when Professor Stabler's next class is?"

"Yes, sir. Give me a few seconds and I'll have that information for you," Carol replied as her fingers flew across the keyboard.

"Okay, I've got it. You're in luck officers; he just started a lecture seminar class about ten minutes ago. Do you want the location?"

"Yeah, that'd be great," Fin replied, as he looked over at John and rolled his eyes, as if to say '_well, what did you think we were here for?'_.

"Alright, Professor Stabler's class is in Hamilton Hall, Lecture A. Here's a campus map—," she was interrupted by President Williams.

"That won't be necessary, Carol, thank you. I'll drive the officers there now in the campus rover. It will get them there much quicker."

"Thank you. We appreciate it," John said.

The three men quickly walked outside and around to the back of the building where a vehicle similar in appearance to a golf cart was parked.

"This is our campus rover. We use it when we need to respond to urgent issues on campus. It's a bit faster than your average golf cart, but is well-suited for navigating on campus grounds."

Within a few minutes, they pulled up outside a building, typical of college campuses designed in the Gothic architectural style. A sign out front proclaimed it as Hamilton Hall.

"Lecture A is on the ground floor, all the way to the rear, last door on the left. Please let Professor Stabler know that the university is ready and willing to assist him in whatever manner he may need to handle this situation."

"Thank you, President Williams. We certainly will," Fin said.

With a parting handshake, the two SVU veterans walked into the building that was currently playing host to their erstwhile former colleague.


	4. Chapter 4: Ruminating on the Past

**Obligatory Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, the SVU universe, or much of anything else, actually. I do own this plot line that keeps me awake at night. Dick Wolf owns the L&O:SVU world. **

**Chapter Four: Ruminating on the Past**

**Hamilton Hall, Lecture A**

Elliot Stabler was in his element, passing on his hard-earned knowledge of law enforcement, rules, regulations, policies, procedures, interrogation tactics, etc. He never thought that he would enjoy this—being out of action, teaching college kids. He had been coming out of a very bad place when the opportunity arose and his therapist encouraged him to go for it, reasoning that slipping back into law enforcement tangentially, without all the attendant stresses—shootings, stabbings, standing over crime scenes over and over and over again, keeping crazy hours, etc., —would help the demons eating him from the inside out, ever since he shot Jenna Fox.

He'd had a breakdown: an actual, physical, mental, emotional breakdown. He had to be hospitalized in a locked psychiatric ward, something only his family, attorney, and Captain Tucker from I.A.B knew. And each of them were bound, either by love and loyalty, or ethics and confidentiality, to not reveal that information to anyone without Elliot's express permission. And he refused to allow his squad to know. Ashamed of his self-perceived weakness, avoiding the looks of pity, angry at the whole world—none of this did he want to share with his colleagues—his friends. Hell, they were more than that; they were his second family—one that he spent more time with than his actual family.

And then, of course, there was her. Olivia. His longtime partner. His best friend. The frequent star of both his dreams and his nightmares. The woman for whom he has long held more than a professional or platonic affection, marriage be damned. In those first few days after the shooting, every time he closed his eyes, he saw her. Saw her shot, taking the place of Sister Peg on the floor, her life's blood spilling out, taking with it her beloved soul and a chunk of his heart.

It got so that he didn't sleep. He couldn't eat, either, because it would all come retching back up when he shut his eyes and saw the nightmare that could've been. The only thing he could do was drink. And drink he did, to numb himself, distance himself as much as possible from the pain.

Prolonged sleep deprivation, emotionally devastating hallucinations, lack of food, and an excess of alcohol combined to break him. He lashed out at Kathy, at his kids, even his priest when he went seeking the answer as to why God allow these things to happen.

It culminated with him physically assaulting Captain Tucker when the veteran IAB investigator had come to question him again. It took just one snide comment from Tucker and Elliot lost it. He jumped over the table and began to pummel the older man. Mercifully, for Tucker's health and his own legal situation, he was much weaker than usual from the lack of sleep and sustenance, and the older man was easily able to overcome him and restrain him. It was Tucker who called the ambulance to take him to the hospital when the man realized that Elliot was not just lacking anger management skills, self-restraint, or discipline. He saw the blank stare in those blue eyes, the tears streaming that the detective didn't seem to notice, the incoherent muttering spilling nonstop from his mouth, the whole body tremors. He knew Detective Stabler was in the midst of a psychotic break. In a rare moment of compassion for the younger man, Tucker did not include anything more than Elliot's initial statement of events in his report. There would be no record of what had happened. The record would only indicate that Detective Stabler had become acutely ill, necessitating an ambulance to be dispatched and that was it.

Upon admittance to the hospital, Elliot was stripped of his phone, his belt, his tie, even his shoelaces—anything that could be used to harm himself or someone else. He was given some scrubs to wear until Kathy could bring him some clothing.

Those first few days in the psych ward passed in a blur. He actually had very little recollection of what went on during those days. He knew from talking to his therapist and with Kathy that he was very heavily medicated to break him out of the psychotic state. He was kept isolated in a padded room, coming out only for his therapy sessions and to shower. About a week after his admittance, marking three weeks since the shooting, he was finally deemed stable enough to move to a regular patient room on the ward. Even that, though, had extensive safety measures.

The furniture was a sturdy plastic, similar to the Little Tykes sandbox he had once bought for Eli. It was all bolted to the floor—nightstand, bed, bookcase, the works. There were no electrical sockets, no bedside lamp, no alarm clock, no wall decor. There wasn't even a light switch. The lights were controlled from outside the room. The only windows were the small wire-grated window in the door, designed more for staff observation than the patient's view, and a similarly grated window high on the wall across from the bed. There was no furniture on that wall to prevent anybody from accessing the window.

The room had its own ensuite, but there was no door separating the room from the bathroom. The shower had no curtain, the water temperature was regulated between cold and tepid with a timer on how long the water could run. The toilet was tankless, similar to the kind seen in solitary confinement prison cells. At shower time, a staff member would stand just outside the door frame to make sure the patient didn't self-harm. The same staff member would observe the patient closely when shaving, having dispensed to him a disposable razor that would then be collected after shaving. There were no spare towels or bed linens—anything and everything that could be fashioned into a weapon was strictly forbidden. Elliot considered it like being in jail but with slightly better decor and nicer guards without weapons.

About a week after his admittance, after he had been settled into a regular room, he was permitted to use the patient phone to call home. The hospital had already notified Kathy that he was there, and Captain Tucker had explained to her what had happened since Elliot was in no condition at that time to do so himself, but this was the first time that Elliot had actually spoken with anyone outside of the hospital.

After the to-be-expected somewhat tearful greeting and inquiries on both sides about health and well-being, Kathy tentatively asked a question.

"Elliot, I have your cell phone, along with the rest of the stuff you had on you when you were admitted. When the hospital called me that afternoon, I came and got your stuff and Captain Tucker was there and he filled me in while you were being admitted. You were so out of it that you probably don't even remember seeing me there. At any rate, Olivia has tried calling you and texting you multiple times. She's even tried calling our home phone and left several voicemails. I haven't answered because I'm not sure what to say. What do you want me to tell her?"

"Tell her nothing. I don't want her to know. Just let my phone battery die so it doesn't keep ringing. Don't answer when she calls the home phone."

Kathy protested, "But Elliot, she's your partner, your friend..." _the woman that you love_, Kathy said the last bit quietly in her head.

"No, Kathy, damn it. I don't want her or any of them to know. I wont be able to bear it when I go back if they all know," Elliot said firmly.

"Okay, Elliot, if that's what you want. I don't want to argue with you about this of all things. I'll come visit in a few days, bring the kids to see you, and is there anything we can bring you? They gave me a list of permitted items, and I'd be happy to bring anything you're allowed."

"Yeah, Kath, that'd be great," Elliot said as he rubbed his hand down his face in weariness. "Bring me some clothes, some socks, slippers, a blank notebook or journal and a pen or pencil, and some books— in my locker at the precinct I've got several from the seminar at Quantico that I haven't gotten around to reading. Oh, and I need basic toiletries—soap, deodorant, shampoo, toothpaste, shaving cream, stuff like that."

"Sure, Elliot, but how am I supposed to get those books from your locker in your squad room without your co-workers, without _Olivia_ seeing me and asking what's going on? Phone calls I can dodge, but I won't look these people in the eyes and lie to them," Kathy said with both weariness and exasperation in her tone. Elliot caught the undertone of jealousy and resentment when she emphasized Olivia's name. He was tired of dealing with that after so many arguments when he would reassure her that nothing had ever happened between the two of them.

"Contact Captain Tucker at I.A.B. He knows what's going on, of course and will keep it confidential. If he is seen retrieving stuff from my locker, it will just look like he's gathering potential evidence for his investigation."

"Alright, Elliot. I'll see what I can do. The kids are all in the other room. They know that I'm talking to you," she said as she stood in the doorway smiling at them as they looked at her eagerly, wanting to know how their father was and tell him they love him. "Do you want to speak with them now? We can put you on speakerphone."

"No, you know what, Kathy? I'd love to talk to them, but I don't think I'm quite in the place right now to talk to them. Not while I'm just barely out of the padded room. It's bad enough that they know I'm crazy. I'm supposed to be strong, be the protector, be their hero, and right now, I'm none of those things," he said sadly.

"That's bullshit, Elliot, and you know it."

Elliot was taken aback by her words and the venom that has crept into them. Up to that point, she had been practically tiptoeing around him.

Kathy removed herself from the doorway to the den, seeing that the kids were listening intently to her side of the conversation, and she didn't want to upset them anymore. She went to their bedroom and shut the door.

"These are your children, Elliot! They love you. You will always be their hero. Are you telling me that if you had been shot in the line of duty and were in the hospital, that you would be any less their hero? That they would think you're weak? Give our children a little more credit than that.

"You know what, Elliot? You are not the only one hurting right now. Your kids are hurting—do you think it was easy on them those first few days where you drank yourself into a stupor? Do you think it was easy for them that the only times you acknowledged any of us were to yell at us? Eli was actually, legitimately scared of you that night before your 'incident'. He had nightmares that night and the next. You turned into a monster in his dreams.

"After the 'incident', I was able to gather them all together and explain to them that Daddy was sick and that he didn't mean to hurt us, that he still loves us. The older kids, especially Kathleen, understood, but Eli doesn't, not really. He asked if we could bring you come chicken noodle soup to help you feel better. He wanted to know if you needed a band-aid and some cuddles. He wants to talk to you, to give you a hug and a kiss.

"I can tell him that we can't see you right now or give you hugs yet, but how am I supposed to explain to him that his Daddy doesn't want to talk to him? How is that supposed to make him feel like you love him and that you haven't actually turned into the monster in his dreams?

"Damn it, Elliot, I'm not asking you to have a long conversation. I'm not even asking you to talk to them individually. Are you really so wrapped up in yourself and your feelings that you can't consider those of your kids just long enough to say, 'Hi, I love you guys and I'm working hard to get better so I can come home'?"

Elliot just listened, all of Kathy's words, instead of reassuring him, actually reaffirmed his belief that he wasn't worthy of his family; not like this.

"Kathy," he said as he once again scrubbed his hand over his face, his voice weary and broken, "this isn't the same as being shot. Cops' kids always know that getting shot by a bad guy could happen when their dad or mom is at work. They can kinda brace themselves for that phone call, that kind of hospital visit.

"This is not that. I wasn't shot by a bad guy. If anything, I was the bad guy. I did the shooting of a teenage girl. I essentially hulked out and assaulted a fellow officer just for an off-hand comment. It's not an equivalent analogy.

"Is it unfair to them? Absolutely, and I feel that guilt already, on top of everything else I feel. But you, you don't get to serve me a second, steaming portion of guilt. That, too, isn't fair. For once, I need to put myself first— over my senses of duty and responsibility, my love for my kids. If I don't prioritize myself now, at this point in my recovery, I won't be in any shape to be there for them later."

It didn't escape Kathy's notice that he didn't say anything about his love for her. Just some lip service about duty and responsibility. That's when she realized that's what their marriage had become to him; what it probably had been for a very long time. He only came back home because of Eli. It was his duty, his responsibility that brought him back, that kept him there. And, she realized, if she was truly honest with herself, she didn't feel connected to him and their marriage anymore. She wasn't happy, even before the events of the past several weeks. When she processed this, she felt a twinge of the sadness one would expect to feel at such a revelation, but what surprised her was the overwhelming sense of relief she felt. She was brought back to the conversation at hand by Elliot's voice increasing in volume.

"Kathy? Kathy are you still there?"

"Yes, I, um, uh yes, I'm still here, " she stumbled over her words with her revelatory thoughts still running in a corner of her mind.

"Do you understand where I am coming from, now," asked Elliot.

"You know, El," the nickname tasting bittersweet as it fell from her lips, "I do and I don't. I think if it was me in that situation, I'd move heaven and hell to see, to talk to my kids. But, I'm not you. And that's okay. I think...," she trailed off as she gathered her nerve to say the next part.

"I think when I bring your stuff to you that I should leave the kids at home. You and I need to talk, the kind of conversation we can't have over the phone or in front of the children."

"Okay, Kathy. That's probably better for everyone," he said almost in a whisper, feeling that he knew what that conversation would entail.

"Alright, Elliot. Get some rest; keep up the work you're doing with your therapist. I'll pass along your love to the kids and your regrets that you couldn't tell them yourself," Kathy offered as a conciliatory gesture because she knew she _had_ been somewhat unfair by flooding him with all that anger, guilt, and disappointment when he was already struggling.

"Thanks, Kathy. I appreciate that. Take care of yourself and them. I'll see you in a few days." Elliot hung up and went back to his room to weep.

A commotion in the back of the lecture hall snapped Elliot's focus back into the here and now. He shook his head to clear it of his ruminations and cleared his throat to get the students' attention and so he could ask what the problem was.

Before he could open his mouth, however, the _problem_ walked down one of the aisles.

"Professor Stabler! NYPD," Fin said loudly, even though you could hear a pin drop in the room. As he was speaking, Fin and Munch flashed their badges, despite Elliot knowing full well who they were. "We need to speak with you urgently."

Elliot raised an eyebrow at the formality of his long-time former colleagues. But he supposed he deserved it, considering how he left.

"Detectives, can it wait? As you can see, I'm in the middle of a class," Elliot gestured to the students raptly taking in the exchange.

"I'm sorry, Professor. It cannot wait. President Williams has authorized you to dismiss your class and come with us," Munch replied seriously.

At that, Elliot raised both eyebrows. What had happened that he needed to go with two detectives from the Special Victims Unit. Immediately, his thoughts ran to his kids. Had something happened?

"Um, of course," his voice initially shaking before he drew on all his strength to level it out.

"Class is dismissed. Follow your syllabus regarding the discussion group activity and don't forget to submit your papers on the pros and cons of a 'stop and frisk' policy. They're still due and need to be uploaded to Blackboard by midnight tomorrow night."

The class slowly and reluctantly began to pack up, wanting to watch whatever was going to go down.

Elliot, on the other hand, couldn't pack up his stuff quickly enough, shoving papers into his briefcase, and shutting off the computer and overhead projector, all while panicking that something had happened to one of his kids.

"Fin, Munch, tell me," he begged. "Is it Eli? Or one of the girls? What has happened?" Elliot omitted Dickie from his inquiries because he knew that his son was safe at Camp Lejeune, NC, and if something had happened to him, it would be an official with the United States Marine Corps coming to see him, not two detectives from the Manhattan Special Victims unit.

Fin answered him, somewhat gently, mindful of Elliot's obvious distress over his children, but also with a hint of anger at the man who has just left without a word. The man who had abandoned his partner of twelve years. Olivia had always held a special place in Fin's heart and her wounded spirit had hurt him, too.

"It's not the kids, or Kathy. It's Olivia."

A/N: Now, that's what I call a chapter! Sorry (not sorry) about the cliffhanger but this was a natural stopping point for this chapter. Never fear, we will get back to poor Olivia soon!

Now, I've updated everything I have written to this point, so updates will now come a little slower than they have been. I'm setting a personal goal to update at least once every three days. If I get more than that, yay! Also, I apologize for any typos in the first three chapters. I typed them using the touchscreen on my iPad Pro and it wasn't as easy as you might think, hahaha. With this massive chapter, it would've taken me forever to type it up by tapping the screen, so this time, I wised up and grabbed the Magic Keyboard to my iMac and synced it to the iPad and it was so much easier and quicker.

Please review! Reviews fuel the mind, much as 2 AA batteries fuel this keyboard.

-xoxoxo, Kim


	5. Chapter 5: The Dance and The Fight

**Disclaimer: See previous chapters.**

**A/N: This one will probably be short, sorry. I had my nieces the past two days and barely had time to sit and eat, much less write. However, I promised once every three days, so I'm aiming to keep my word.**

**A couple notes: A reviewer asked me what an MOS is. In this context it is a Member of Service. You hear Liv use it when she calls for help on the radio when she and Kathy were in the accident. She says Kathy is the wife of an MOS. Second, I am in no way a doctor, so the medical stuff may not be very accurate/factual. Most of what I know is from my own experiences of countless ER visits, nine surgeries, and ten lumbar punctures; and a bit from watching medical shows and documentaries. The psych ward that Elliot was in is drawn from my own week-long stay in one after I went 'round the twist—law school, all my medical issues, and finding my cat dead under my bed unexpectedly broke me down. So, I have intimate knowledge of the plastic furniture and monitored showers, hahaha. The school stuff is also drawn from my own experiences as an older, non-traditional student getting an associates and bachelor degrees and one and a half years in law school before my health forced me out.**

Now, without further ado...

**SVU—SVU—SVU—SVU—SVU—SVU—SVU**

**Chapter Five: The Dance and The Fight**

**Mercy General Hospital**

The trauma team was racing against the clock. Their patient was quickly reaching the end of 'the golden hour', that critical first hour that can mean the difference between life and death. They rushed her into CT, which was thankfully not in use at the time. The chief of neurosurgery, the head trauma surgeon, and the chief of general surgery were there with the radiologist to get an immediate read on the scans. Time was critical. As the scans started coming up, the surgeons knew it would be all hands on deck. Their patient had suffered devastating injuries, any one of which could prove fatal.

"Okay, we've got a grade 3 subdural hematoma. That needs to be addressed immediately or fixing everything else would be pointless," stated the Dr. Sam Michaels, the neurosurgeon.

"And it looks like we have a pneumothorax and torn diaphragm. Heart and all major vessels look okay," continued Dr. Lewis Jones, the chief trauma surgeon.

"Do you guys see that? We've got major internal bleeding in the abdomen. Her liver is lacerated; her spleen is practically in two pieces; and her left kidney may have some sort of injury to it, as well. This all needs to be fixed. She has very little in there that doesn't need to be fixed. I don't like the look of that abdominal aorta, either. Does it look like it's bulging to anyone else?," asked Dr. Samantha Jones, the chief of general surgery and wife of Dr. Lewis Jones.

"You're right," he said. Looks like we will need cardio as well. Somebody page her stat to meet us in OR 1. We are all going to have to work in concert together to get her as stable as possible. We might not be able to fix everything before she becomes too unstable. Let's prioritize and coordinate our efforts now so we have a solid game plan before we cut into her.

"Dr. Michaels, obviously, that brain bleed is priority. You and your resident will do your craniotomy and get that bleed under control.

"Sami, that spleen needs attention pronto before she bleeds out. The liver lac looks pretty minor, so let's hold off on that until we've had the major issues taken care of. Check out that kidney, too, while you're in there. Coordinate with Dr. Stevens when she gets there to make sure you aren't in each other's way. She needs to get a look at that aorta before it progresses to a ruptured triple-A.

"As for me, I'll get that diaphragm tear sewn up, which will help with her ability to breathe on her own. The pneumothorax will be addressed with a simple chest tube.

"Let's remember people, that at any point we may have to stop and follow damage control protocol and pack her and allow her body to rest before we go at it again. Hopefully, it won't come to that. We have a great team, a great plan, now it's time for the dance," Dr. Jones wrapped up and all of the surgeons rushed to get scrubbed into surgery. It was going to be crowded, chaotic, and one of New York's finest's life was in their hands.

While the doctors were scrubbing, the OR scrub team prepped the OR and the patient for the battle that was about to happen. The anesthesiologist came in, reviewed the patient's vitals, had a rundown from a scrub nurse on what the surgical game plan was, and calculated how much anesthesia would be necessary.

The patient was brought into the OR, the anesthesiologist went to work. The patient was already unconscious; now he needed to make sure she stayed that way throughout this surgery and that she felt no pain. She was already intubated by the ER trauma team, removing one step from his procedure. He just needed to get her hooked up to the gas.

The scrub team flitted around, setting up trays of sterile equipment, placing the surgical drapes, making sure they had an adequate supply of blood on hand, gathering the laparotomy sponges (also known as laps) that the surgeons would be calling out for as they worked to keep the field as clear of blood as possible. One team member shaved a section of the patient's hair to prep the field for the craniotomy.

Considering how much work had just been accomplished, it had only taken them mere minutes. When every minute counts, they knew they had to be on the top of their game.

The surgeons and residents started coming in to the OR from the scrub room. Members of the scrub team quickly gowned and gloved them and then the doctors arranged themselves around the patient according to their assigned jobs.

The dance was in full swing.

The sound of the pneumatic drill cut through the air as Dr. Michaels drilled into the patient's skull. The brain bleed was causing the patient's brain to swell. If they couldn't control that bleed and the swelling, her brain could herniate and the dance would be over. He and his resident worked calmly, efficiently, and with sure, steady hands to finish their job as quickly as possible.

While the neurosurgical team addressed the subdural hematoma, the trauma, general, and cardiothoracic surgeons cut into their patient from stem to stern. As soon as the abdominal aorta was in view, Dr. Stevens stepped up and started assessing.

"You were right. It has started to dissect. It's a miracle that we were able to catch this in time before it completely blew. I need clamps now. Let's head this thing off at the pass."

Dr. Stevens was well aware of the potential consequences of clamping the aorta distally and proximally, but there just wasn't time to attempt the intra-operative aortic perfusion that would keep the vessel perfused, providing blood flow to the spinal cord and the organs that were fed by the artery below the clamp. The quickest and easiest way to get her part of the job done was to just do the sequential aortic clamping and sew in a graft to stabilize the vessel. Her fingers flew as they sewed. If the clamps were on too long, the patient could be paralyzed, her organs could become ischemic.

As she finished up, the monitor keeping track of the patient's vital signs began to signal an alarm. Everyone looked up from their work, and one of the residents called out that the pulse was climbing rapidly and was up to 180. Then the waves became erratic, practically overlapping each other.

"She's in V-fib! Charge the paddles to 20!" Dr. Stevens was handed the internal defibrillator paddles and placed them on either side of the heart. "Clear!" And then a jolt. She looked back at the monitor. The patient was still in V-fib. If this rhythm wasn't corrected it would only be a matter of seconds before the heart stopped beating.

"Charge to 30! Clear!" Another jolt. The monitor alarm stopped going off as the heart rhythm dropped back into a sinus rhythm. Everyone in the room let out a breath they didn't even know they were holding.

"Okay, folks, let's make sure that's the only bit of excitement we have in here today. We still have a long way to go. Dr. Stevens, are we good?" asked Dr. Lewis Jones.

"We're good, LJ. The clamps are off, the graft is secure and holding, perfusion to organs looks good. I think my part here is—" before she could finish her sentence, a burst of blood splattered on her face shield.

"Damn it, it blew! Okay, we need blood running, get those clamps back on, and I need another graft." The monitor once again signaled an alarm, this time for rapidly falling blood pressure.

The dance had turned into the fight. The surgeons' fight to save this patient, and her fight to stay alive. It wasn't clear who was fighting the tougher battle.

Dr. Stevens once again sewed in another graft, and then two more, above and below the ruptured section, just to be extra cautious. She took the clamps off, and everybody once again held their breath. A minute later there was a simultaneous exhalation as the repair held this time.

Dr. Stevens stepped back from her place at the table, and took a minute to just breathe, and to observe her fellow surgeons as they continued to fight against steep odds. She had already had to be shocked back into rhythm twice, and they had only just started.

Back at the head, Dr. Michaels had grown increasingly concerned about the swelling he saw. The bleeder had been clamped off, yet the brain continued to swell.

"Alright, let's push some more mannitol. We've got to get this pressure under control. I think we need to remove the skull cap to allow more room for the swelling which should relieve the intracranial pressure some. We'll put in an intraparenchymal pressure monitor so we can continue to track the pressure after we wrap up in here." He and his resident started shaving a larger section of hair so they could pull back the scalp and remove a section of the top of her skull.

While Dr. Michaels worked to prevent brain herniation, the husband and wife team of surgeons were hard at work in the patient's torso. The tube to re-inflate the lung had already been placed, and the male Dr. Lewis was in the midst of sewing up the diaphragm.

"Doctors," came the voice of the heretofore silent anesthesiologist. "Her body temperature is 95 degrees and dropping."

The surgeons' eyes connected and their hope for this patient diminished by a degree. Hypothermia was the first gateway into the Trauma Triad of Death.

"Okay let's push some warm fluids, and pack some warming blankets around any accessible area. We have to stabilize that temperature before we progress into coagulopathy. If we get to that stage, it's damage control time. She cannot slip into an acidotic state. How many units of blood have we given her so far?"

"Five, in addition to the two given in the ER," a nurse replied.

"Okay. Let's work faster, people."

Dr. Sami Jones called for laps after laps, as she tried to clear the field around the spleen. She already knew from the scans that there was no saving the organ, and that her first order of business was a splenectomy. She finally got a clear view, and clamped off the vessels that normally supplied the bloodthirsty spleen but were instead dumping blood into the patient's abdomen. She scooped out the mangled spleen, and set about tying off the vessels that no longer needed to feed the spleen. As she did so, she noticed the bleeding seemed to be increasing.

"Doctors. We have a problem," broached the anesthesiologist at the same time a nurse spoke out.

"She's got blood coming out of her nose," the anesthesiologist advised.

The nurse added, "and there is blood leaking through her IV site."

"Damn, damn, damn. That's it. Damage control time. Dr. Michaels, where are you at?"

"Just finished placing the monitor. All that's left on our end is to bandage up her head, and run test the plantar reflex since we had to clamp the aorta. We need to rule out any damage to the spinal cord.

"Sami, where are you?"

"I just have to finish tying off this last vessel. Didn't yet get to work on the liver lac or check on the kidney. I'm also seeing some damage to the gallbladder that will need to be addressed sooner rather than later."

"Alright, let's pack her up with some laps, and cover her with a sterile pressure bandage. As long as her vitals hold steady, we will monitor here in the ICU for the next 48 hours and then go in again. At that point, we will bring Ortho in to address these fractures," Dr. Lewis said.

The doctors wearily stepped away as the rest of the team packed up the patient with laps and the pressure bandage. While they were fueled by the adrenaline of the surgery which made it seem like time had flown by, it actually had been several hours since they first stepped into the OR. And even that hadn't been enough time.

Their fight was temporarily suspended, but their patient's fight continued.

**Mercy General Hospital, Surgical Waiting Room.**

Captain Donald Cragen paced the small lounge area. He had just arrived and been told that the patient suspected to be Olivia was in surgery at that moment. He was told that somebody would bring a photo of the patient out to him so he could make positive identification. His heart hoped that it was somebody else; that Liv was just running late that morning. Maybe in her scramble to get to work she forgot her phone at home, and that's why she wasn't answering. His head and his gut, though, knew that it was her.

Just then a nurse in scrubs came out of the restricted area and into the lounge. She had what appeared to be a Polaroid picture in her hand as she approached him.

"Are you here to identify the Jane Doe patient," she asked.

"Yes. My name is Captain Donald Cragen of the Manhattan SVU. If the preliminary identification was correct, then I am the patient's commanding officer and authorized medical representative until her designated emergency contact can be reached and brought here."

"Okay. Here's the picture we have of her," she held out the picture.

Captain Cragen grasped it, and said a prayer before he brought it up and looked down at it. There were all sorts of tubes, and wires, and a ventilator connected to a hose inserted in her mouth. But that face. He knew that face. He had praised and chastised its owner; he had seen that face full of happiness and he had seen it full of despair. It was, without a doubt, Olivia.

In all the years since he had gone sober, he never wanted a drink as badly as he did now. This woman was like a daughter to him. He wasn't sure how or if he could maintain his sobriety if she didn't make it. It was a battle that he hoped he wouldn't have to fight. Olivia simply _had_ to pull through this. The alternative was simply unfathomable.

He sent up a prayer for the doctors who were involved in a delicate dance, fighting to save Olivia's life; and a prayer for Olivia that she fight with all the fierceness, determination, and bravery he had seen from her over the years.

He didn't realize that had let the arm holding the photograph fall to his side, his hand releasing its grasp on the picture until he heard an anguished cry. He snapped out of his thoughts, and turned to where the sound had come from. It was then that he noticed he had dropped the picture, and it had been picked up by the person who let out that anguished moan.

Elliot Stabler sat down in shock, the photo he had scooped up off the floor, clutched in his fist.

SVU—SVU—SVU—SVU—SVU—SVU—SVU

A/N: Poor Liv. She's not doing well at all. And it will only get worse for her, and for her friends. Send Liv your well-wishes via reviews!

-xoxoxoxoxo, Kim


	6. Chapter 6: Just Breathe

**Disclaimer: SVU—not mine; Non-canon characters and plot—mine. Savvy?**

**A/N: I need to take a moment to thank everybody who has reviewed so far. I freely admit to being a review junkie and it gives me quite a thrill when I get an email notification of another review. Y'all are the best. Thanks: **Heart Story, **justanotherbookworm78, **onecrackerjack, **athenakitty, **spacekitten2700, **M.S., **ncisandsvuaddict, **Labordoodlelove, **TheodoraAltman, **Suansil4. Your words mean everything to me.**

**SVU—SVU—SVU—SVU—SVU—SVU—SVU**

**Chapter 6: Just Breathe**

**Hudson University, Lecture A**

_Fin answered him, somewhat gently, mindful of Elliot's obvious distress over his children, but also with a hint of anger at the man who has just left without a word. The man who had abandoned his partner of twelve years. Olivia had always held a special place in Fin's heart and her wounded spirit had hurt him, too._

_"It's not the kids, or Kathy. It's Olivia."_

Elliot's first reaction was that of overwhelming relief that his children were okay, but then his mind caught up with the second part of Fin's statement. _Olivia_. _Something had happened to Olivia. _His mind almost couldn't process it, like he was suddenly on an abandoned road shrouded in a deep fog.

He shook his head to try and clear the fog, struggling to get the words out to ask the questions he needed answered.

"Wha...How...I...Whe...," Elliot stumbled over the words, unable to utter a coherent thought. Thankfully, the two men in front of him knew him well and were able to anticipate his questions.

"The Captain got a phone call this morning from a trauma nurse at Mercy General. The caller advised that they had a Jane Doe patient come in from an accident, in critical condition," John said.

Fin picked up the story, "The woman didn't have any identification on her, but somebody in the ER thinks they recognized her. A tentative identification was made pending formal identification.

"Elliot, they are pretty sure that it's Olivia."

Elliot's mind raced. Like Captain Cragen before him, he immediately deduced that the need for formal identification meant that Olivia hadn't been conscious from the time EMS arrived on the scene. That if she was still unconscious, it was serious. Of course, the very fact that his former colleagues had sought him out to inform him was majorly indicative of the utter seriousness of the situation. His mind started filling with fog again, the roaring in his ears overpowering all other sound.

Munch could read every thought of Elliot's as he absorbed the information. His close observation of Elliot allowed him to be forewarned that the other man was overwhelmed and about to be overcome. He saw his eyes go glassy, his face a ghastly shade of white, his breaths were short, rapid pants, and he had started to sway.

"Fin. He's about to topple over. Catch him."

Fin put his arms out just in time to catch Elliot. He lowered him to the floor while Munch rooted around in Elliot's bag.

"What are you doin', man? What are you looking for?" he asked as he slid his arms out from underneath Elliot, whose eyes were open but not seeing anything as he continued panting.

"He's hyperventilating. I'm looking for something for him to breathe into to get some carbon dioxide back in him. Aha!" Munch exclaimed as he pulled out a crumpled paper bag, probably stuffed in there in the absence of a trash receptacle.

He brought the bag to Elliot's face with one hand, making sure to cover his mouth and nose. With the other hand, he guided Elliot's hands up to grasp the bag to hold it in place.

"Breathe, Elliot. Just breathe. Slow, deep breaths. In...and out...and in...and out."

Fin and Munch observed as Elliot's respiratory rate slowed down, his face gained some more color, and his eyes lost that glassy, unseeing appearance.

"You back with us?" Fin asked in a neutral tone. He could tell Elliot was genuinely upset, that he cared about Olivia still, but Fin still couldn't let go of some of that animosity he had built up toward the former detective.

"Yeah," Elliot said quietly. "Yeah, I'm...it was just a shock, you know?"

"How is she? Do you know?"

"We've told you all that we know about her. We've been ordered by Captain Cragen to bring you to the hospital, even if we have to cuff you and drag you," Fin said, almost hoping that the cuffs would be necessary.

"Of course, I want to go to the hospital! I...I have to be there. It's Liv! How could you think that I wouldn't be there for her?!" Elliot glared at Fin for daring to suggest that he'd have to be dragged to go see Liv in the hospital.

"Oh, man, I don't know. How about the fact that you just vanished from our lives, from _her_ life? How about that it's been 18 months since any of us spoke with you? How about Liv breaking down and crying in the interrogation room when she found out you turned in your papers without talking to her? She cried harder and longer than she did when her mother died. You did that to her.

"So, excuse me for thinkin' that you might not want to drop everything to go to the hospital." Fin glared right back at Elliot, his fists clenched at his sides. The tension in the air between the two was thick. So naturally, Munch had to cut through it with one of his usual sardonic remarks.

"Well, don't hold back, Fin. Tell us how you really feel."

It worked. Both Elliot and Fin took a breath, relaxed, and catching each other's eyes, quirked their mouths into a half-smile, and nodded to each other. Believing the situation required an explanation, but also believing that this wasn't the appropriate time for that conversation, Elliot settled for a simple apology and a promise to a thorough explanation later.

"I'm truly sorry. I absolutely deserve your contempt. I can only tell you that there is a long story involved, and when I tell you, you may feel that I handled everything poorly, but just know this now—I never, not once, wanted to hurt Olivia in any way.

"I promise that I will explain _everything _as soon as we have enough time and an appropriate place, neither of which is here or now."

"Okay. Well, what are we waiting for? Let's get to the hospital!," John said. He then whispered an aside to Elliot, "The Captain gave us permission for lights and sirens. You ready to feel like a cop again?"

Despite the gravity of the current situation, Elliot managed to let out a small chuckle at Munch's words. The man had quite the gift for bringing a bit of levity to difficult situations.

The three men exited the building, where Munch and Fin were pleasantly surprised to find the Campus Rover and a member of the campus police waiting for them.

"President Williams said you would need to get back across campus in a hurry. He had a meeting to attend, so he sent me back with the Rover to get you to your car as quickly as possible," the officer said.

"Please tell him that we appreciate it, very much," Munch said gratefully.

They all climbed into the Rover and were at the parking lot outside the Administration building in just a few minutes. Elliot quickly spotted the good ol' squad car, noting that while many things have changed, some remain just the same.

Soon enough, the three were racing down the streets of New York City, lights flashing and siren wailing to get to the hospital where it was possible that their dear friend and colleague was dying. Each man hoping that there had been a mistake and that it wasn't Olivia, and each man dreading what would be waiting for them when they arrived at the hospital.

**Mercy General Hospital**

The car screamed to a halt outside the main entrance to the hospital. The detectives didn't even give a thought to leaving the vehicle in the fire lane. Even if they had considered it, they would've claimed police privilege with exigent circumstances.

Elliot was the first out of the car, running into the hospital, desperate to find out where Olivia was, and how she was doing, still praying with every fiber in his being that it wasn't her. He reached the information desk and barked out, "I'm here for Olivia Benson. What room is she in? What's her condition?," the questions shooting out rapid-fire.

"Sir, please, take a breath and calm down. We will give you all the information we are permitted. Now you said the patient's name was Benton?," the woman behind the desk asked.

"No, Benson. B-E-N-S-O-N. Olivia Benson." By this point, Munch and Fin had caught up with Elliot, both pretty impressed with his speed and agility after a year and a half away from the force.

"No, I'm sorry sir. We don't have an Olivia Benson listed as a patient."

Before Elliot could bite the head off of the poor woman just trying to do her job, John interjected.

"NYPD," he flashed his badge, "Are you sure? Our captain received a phone call from a nurse in your ER advising us that she had been brought here after an accident."

"I'm sorry, but we have no record of an Olivia Benson having been admitted or treated in the ER today. Perhaps your captain told you the wrong hospital?"

Fin got his phone out of his pocket, intending to call Captain Cragen to verify which hospital he had said he was going to so he could make the ID. His head snapped up, and he felt hope blossoming for the first time this morning.

"Guys. Maybe it wasn't Liv. Maybe Cap'n came down here and found out it wasn't her. Then they wouldn't have any record of Olivia as a patient."

The other two men each sucked in a breath as they considered Fin's thoughts. Could it be? Could Olivia really be alright and just have been running late to work this morning?

"Oh," the woman at the information desk said, bringing the three men's attention to return to her. "You're here about Jane Doe. We haven't received a formal identification on her yet, so she's entered in our system as Jane Doe. She's in OR 1, right now. If you go up to the second floor, you'll find the surgical waiting area. Somebody will be out when they can to speak with you and verify identity."

Elliot and the two detectives turned to leave, heading for the bank of elevators across the lobby. Mercifully, the elevator was already on their floor, so they didn't have to wait when they pushed the up button. Once inside the elevator, Elliot mashed the number 2 and the men waited as the elevator took them up, bringing them closer and closer to finding out what happened to Olivia.

Once they arrived on the second floor, they followed the signs through the byzantine labyrinth of corridors to get to the surgical waiting area. As they rounded the last corner, they saw Captain Cragen standing completely still, his arms hanging loosely at his sides. Who knew how long he had been standing there?

Elliot noticed something on the floor, next to the captain's foot. From a distance it looked like a crumpled piece of paper, but as he got closer, he could see that it was actually a photo. It was slightly crumpled, like someone had been clutching it tightly before releasing it. Judging by its positioning, Elliot hazarded that it was Captain Cragen who had dropped it.

While Fin and Munch tried to get Captain Cragen's attention, Elliot scooped up the photo and smoothed it out. It was a Polaroid picture, so it was still creased but even with the crease there was no mistaking the woman in the picture. He had worked alongside that woman for over a decade, spending more time with her than he had his wife. He knew and loved every feature of her beautiful face. Even in the photo with her face bruised, swollen, scratched, tubes and wires all over the place, she still took his breath away. But those tubes, wires, and bruises cut through him and tore away at his heart. Distantly, he heard an agonized keening, but it wasn't until he felt a hand on his shoulder that he realized the sound had come from him.

He looked up at his former Captain, eyes brimming with tears and questions not yet asked.

"How is she?," he croaked.

Captain Cragen looked down at him, his own eyes teary, and said, "I don't know. They haven't come and told me anything.

"I only know that she's still in surgery. I gather that her injuries are very extensive. I was told during the initial call that it was critical to notify her next of kin, and/or her designated emergency contact. Olivia never updated her NOK paperwork once she found Simon. Her emergency contact and medical power of attorney is you."

Elliot nodded, he had known for several years that Olivia had designated him because she had discussed it with him before she updated her paperwork. She had actually asked his _permission_ to do so, in a shy manner so different from her usual confident persona. He had sensed that she was embarrassed to have to ask him, that she had no one else she could trust. He had just assumed that she would have changed it after he disappeared from her life. That she hadn't affected him on two levels: his heart was warmed that she still entrusted this most precious responsibility to him, and he was saddened that she hadn't had anyone else she felt like she could trust to make decisions for her when she couldn't.

The four men waiting for word about their dear friend and colleague sat clustered together in a corner so they didn't intrude on any other patients' families, though at the moment they were the only ones there. The only sounds you could hear were their breaths, including the occasional hitched breathing from Elliot when silent sobs escaped from him, and the tick, tick, ticking of the clock on the wall.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

Suddenly, the sound of a phone ringing cut through the silence, startling all four men who had been staring silently at the door to the restricted OR area.

"Captain Cragen," said the man whose phone had shattered the silence.

"Amaro, yes, I apologize for not checking in earlier. It's been...well...well, it's been a stressful morning."

"No, I haven't had a chance to see the news today. I've been a bit tied up with other matters."

"Yes, it's about Detective Benson. I don't really have all the details and—," he cut off as he listened to whatever Nick was saying on the other line.

"On TV? Alright. Thank you, Amaro. You and Rollins have everything still under control?

"Okay, that's good. Once we know more, I'll call. If, god forbid, the news is bad, I'll arrange for one of the other boroughs' SVUs to take over for us temporarily, so you can join us here.

"From your lips to God's ears, Nick. She needs all the prayers she can get."

With that the Captain disconnected the call and turned to the other men who had all been unabashedly eavesdropping on his side of the conversation.

"Amaro says we need to see the news. Apparently, a tourist captured video of the accident and the immediate aftermath. The news station also obtained CCTV video and spliced it together with the tourist's video, providing a 360 degree view of what happened.

"Nick said it's pretty horrific. He said some of the images had to be pixelated to mute the most graphic parts, but that it was still awful.

"He and Detective Rollins had some suspicions that it involved Liv due to our actions this morning and an overheard conversation between a couple unies. They naturally tied it all together. So, when they saw the video, he said...he said it was like a punch to the gut watching what Olivia went through. Detective Rollins was physically ill.

"So, now you have to decide for yourselves if you want to watch this. Will it help you or Olivia to have seen it? Do you want those images in your minds if, heaven forbid, those are the last images you have of her? I'm going to leave it up to the three of you to decide for yourselves. As her commanding officer, I need to watch in case it comes up in any investigation."

"Captain," Elliot said in a shaky voice, "I ha-have to watch. I owe it to her as her designated emergency contact and power of attorney. I need to see what exactly happened so I can comprehend her injuries and how they occurred. I can't exactly articulate why this is important to me, but it just is.

"I'm also sure that leaving what happened to the imagination will be just as bad, if not worse, than seeing it. I mean we all know that it wasn't a simple fender bender, so our imagination could run rampant, running through all the worst case scenarios."

Fin and Munch looked at each other as silent communication, the kind that long-term partners in sync with each other do, passed between them.

"I'm pretty sure I speak for both of us," John said as he indicated himself and Fin, "when I say that we agree with Elliot. It'll be important for us to understand exactly what happened so we can assist Olivia better with her recovery. It won't just be a physical recovery; she'll also be dealing with the emotional ramifications, and if we know how things unfolded we can help her with that part of her recovery."

"Okay," Captain Cragen nodded, "let's turn on the TV and see if we can catch the news. It's about one o'clock now, so I think there will be a mid-day news report."

He crossed the room to go turn on the television. Thankfully, it was already tuned in to the station he wanted, otherwise he would've had to go searching for a remote control to change the channel.

The voice of the afternoon news anchor broke through the air as he interacted with the weatherman.

"Thank you, Jeff. We will all look forward to the nicer weather, I'm sure," he said as he turned back to his desk, facing the camera dead on.

"Now we turn again to the story we've been following since early this morning. Traffic in the Upper West Side is still snarled as NYPD and FDNY continue to work the scene of this morning's fatal car crash. The intersection at Broadway and W 71st St continues to be closed. Authorities have said it will remain close for an undetermined time. Find an alternate route if you're in the area.

"We have footage of that accident, captured by a tourist and various CCTV cameras in the area. I must caution you that the video we are about to show is graphic in nature and may be disturbing to some viewers."

The four men staring intently at the TV internally braced themselves for what they were about to see. But no amount of bracing could or would prepare them for what they saw.

The video started innocuously enough, a split screen approach with video clearly from the tourist on the left, and CCTV taken from the opposite direction to the tourist, giving the viewer a multi-side view of what was happening.

You could see traffic just starting to move after the signal turned green for traffic heading south on Broadway. It was a tricky area with Broadway, Amsterdam Ave, and W 71st criss-crossing at multiple points, including the major intersection between Broadway and Amsterdam. Traffic could bottleneck there but this morning it seemed to have a pretty good flow. One of NYC's signature yellow taxis was the second car in its lane and as the car in front proceeded through the intersection, the taxi driver let off the brake and followed it into the box. Suddenly, almost as out of nowhere, a car headed north on Amsterdam barreled towards the intersection, showing no signs of slowing down as it approached the traffic signal displaying the red light that means stop.

Just as the yellow taxi was into the middle of the intersection, the other car slammed into it broadside on the passenger side. The impact was so hard that the taxi spun around 90 degrees, presenting the driver's side to the southbound traffic on Broadway. Unfortunately, events had unfolded so quickly that another car traveling south was unable to stop or swerve to avoid the taxi, and it slammed into the driver's side. The force of the impacts combined with the taxi's transformation from a regular rectangular car into one very much resembling an hourglass served to throw the taxi into the air and it came down with a jarring crunch on its roof.

The tourist's video became erratic as he fumbled to switch between his camera app and his phone app. His hands were shaking causing the video to jump around and his fingers fumbled. Off to the side, you could see another witness on the phone, presumably calling 911, at which point the tourist stopped trying to call and started running over to the scene, so that the video bounced around as he ignored his videography to try and help the victims. By the images captured by the CCTV cameras, he probably didn't even realize the camera was still recording.

As various bystanders poured out of stores, restaurants, and banks, little groups formed around each of the three cars as people started to give aid in any way they could until emergency services arrived.

The tourist reached the taxi in a matter of seconds, his breaths the loudest sound amongst the cacophony surrounding the intersection.

As he got his first up-close look of the vehicle, he had to turn his torso to the side as he apparently fought nausea. As he turned his camera angle changed, bringing the vehicle into a very up-close picture.

The four men watching on TV in the waiting room of Mercy General Hospital felt themselves becoming nauseated. These men who had stood over some of the most horrific crime scenes were still overwhelmed by the carnage they saw. Even with the station's attempt at pixelating out the most graphic parts, there was enough that was not pixelated to imagine what was obscured.

The passenger side of the car had been crunched in the area of both doors, all the way into the center console. Barring the other impact and the flip, the car would've been shaped almost like a loose 'c'. But the other impact on the opposite side in almost the exact same location had happened, resulting in that hourglass shape.

As the car was on its roof, the tourist got down on his hands and knees, still holding his phone in his hand, which was still capturing images at an angle and extremely close. He bent his head to try and peer into the hole where one of the windows used to be. He, and therefore his camera, were able to see two occupants, both of whom seemed to have been tossed around.

A low moan was picked up by the camera's microphone, again overpowering the other sounds simply due to vicinity. The tourist focused on the person who moaned. The camera flashed over to a woman in laying in a crumpled heap on the ceiling of the car. There were pixels obscuring various parts of the woman, as well as the 'floor' she was on. There were pixels over her abdomen, a leg, the top of her head, and the blurs on the floor were likely to be blood - _her blood, Elliot thought as he watched_ or worse, bits of flesh.

The seats inside the car had all detached from their mountings and were just as crumpled as almost everything else that could be seen. Perversely enough, the meter kept running, practically the only thing in the car not demolished.

"Ma'am, can you hear me? We are getting you help. It will be here real soon."

Another moan was heard and then a wet, coughing sound, almost like a gurgle. The camera was on its side facing away from the woman as its owner assisted the critically injured woman.

The experienced officers, watching the video while the woman on screen was fighting for her life in the OR, flinched as they recognized that sound. It was the sound of someone coughing up blood and not being able to completely expel it, choking on it.

After that gurgle, no more sound came forth from the woman. The tourist was heard trying to get her attention and he realized she must have fallen unconscious. He spoke, whether to himself, or someone else out of view.

"I can feel a pulse. It's weak, though. Very weak."

It then became clear that he was talking to another Good Samaritan, as he asked, "What about the driver? How's he?"

The other person's voice was muffled, slightly panicked, and female. "I think he's dead. I'm pretty sure. I don't think anyone could survive this."

The tourist grabbed his phone, stuck it in his shirt pocket, stood up and crossed around to the driver's side and again got down on his hands and knees to peer inside. The camera captured its clearest images to that point as the angle the lens was in captured everything.

Because the camera caught so much, the pixelation was heavily placed all over. What could be seen was the steering wheel impaled against a man's torso as he was on his side on the ceiling. The area where his head was laying was completely obscured, implying horrific head injuries.

The video spun around as the tourist quickly stood up, turned to the side and vomited, unable to suppress the nausea any longer.

"Yeah, he's gone."

The female voice off camera could be heard asking, "What about the other person? You said you felt a pulse? After seeing this guy, I can't imagine anyone else surviving in here."

"She's alive, but honestly, I'm not feeling that optimistic about her. I'm not even sure she'll make it until the ambulance gets here, much less actually getting to the hospital. It's going to take quite a bit of work to be able to get her out.

"She's pinned by part of a seat and some part of the partition. Not to mention the window access is all of 6 inches and the car is on its roof."

Back in the waiting room, watching the hours old video in horror, the four guys that held Olivia in their hearts in one way or another, struggled to breathe.

Ever the steady one, Munch said, "Okay, let's take a breath. We know they got her out, and we know that she made it here alive, and we know that the doctors are working to keep her that way."

The others nodded, thankful that one of them was capable of some rational thought after watching that.

Their attention again turned to the video, on which sirens could be heard louder and louder as the response vehicles came closer to the scene. They saw an ambulance come to a halt near the heap that was the taxi. It was clearly the worst off of all three vehicles. FDNY paramedics and the police approached the car where the tourist stood waiting to give his report.

With adrenaline still surging through his body, and his mind still trying to come to terms with everything he had seen, he started talking his words tumbling over each other. He described what he had seen when the accident occurred, though he misremembered the order of impacts, telling them the driver's side had been impacted first, when the video showed it was actually the passenger's side. But the video wouldn't be examined until after all the victims had been tended to, so the error went into the paramedic's report and subsequent briefing to the trauma team.

Elliot and the others watched as a fire truck came on the scene, and then another, and they listened as the firemen discussed the best way to extricate Liv from the car. They couldn't assess the full nature of her injuries as things stood presently, so they had to be very careful to get her out without exacerbating her injuries or causing new ones.

They watched, along with the tourist and his ever present and forgotten phone, as the firemen positioned air bags underneath the accessible parts of the car near the windshield area and the trunk, and watched as they slowly inflated those bags to start lifting the car off the ground, which would allow easier access to Liv. They saw harnesses being hooked on to the car and then to a crane which would help keep the car steady as they worked underneath to get at Olivia.

They saw the metal being twisted, heard the grinding and squealing sounds as the Jaws of Life worked to peel back the tin can that entrapped Olivia. As soon as a large enough hole had been created, the paramedics stepped in to get her on a backboard and secure her spine before anymore potential damage could be done during the extrication, which probably wouldn't be very smooth. They weren't able to get her entirely on the backboard using the access hole they had been granted. They could only get her top half on the board, which was going to have to be good enough for now.

They saw one of the paramedics wrinkle his nose. "Hey Antonio, do you smell that?"

"Oh yeah, man that's gasoline. Damn, the fuel tank has been ruptured. Okay, we can't take anymore time. We have to yank her out."

He shouted over the din to the firefighters that they needed to stop cutting the car in case it sparked.

The men who knew Olivia better than anyone else in the world watched as the paramedics worked together to drag Liv out of the car, and they saw what nobody on the scene had noticed yet. As the firefighters had worked to cut away the car, a spark had fallen on a puddle. A puddle that was not blood. They saw it ignite and the flame growing as it greedily sucked up its own life source.

The flames grew exponentially, a fact that the paramedics and the firemen were now aware of. They scrambled to pull Liv's backboard out of the car, but with her legs off the side of the board and unsecured, it was not going as quickly as anybody would've liked. The firefighters had stopped cutting away at the car when apprised of the fuel leak, and had raced to hook up their hose to a nearby fire hydrant. They radioed in for a truck equipped with fire suppression foam, because water might not be enough to put out a fire fueled by gasoline.

Then, as if everything was in slow motion, they watched as the flames licked at Olivia's legs as they pulled her out with all the strength they had. Once she was out, they picked up the backboard and rushed away to where the ambulance and other personnel had moved on account of the fire. They worked steadily and got her IV connected, intubated her, and secured the rest of her body to the board, and got started wrapping open wounds with gauze.

Suddenly, there was a boom which rocked everybody back. The tourist could be heard to say, "whoa that's hot!". The plumes of smoke that had drifted lazily in the air before the explosion were now spewing forth like a Plinian eruption, which quickly turned the air opaque, making it difficult for the cameras of both the tourist and the CCTV to clearly capture the scene.

The firefighters quickly extinguished the fire and were examining what was left. They were hoping to find some sort of identification for the passenger. The driver was identifiable through his medallion, but when the clothes had been cut off the woman, no ID had been found. Considering the position they found her and the car in, it wasn't a big surprise that she had been ripped away from any of her personal effects.

They gathered in a bag some pieces of paper, some sort of belt and plastic, something metallic, and then there was a hurried discussion about another item found.

The NYPD officers working the accident were waved over to the car and shown something. The tourist and his camera were too far away in the wake of the fire to capture what was said.

The police seemed to ask the firefighters something, and the firefighters in turn carefully and gently pulled something from the car. A member of the Hazardous Response Team came forward with some sort of reinforced box in which the item was carefully placed. The box was then secured further inside of another container and then handed over to the policemen.

While all of this had likely confused the onlookers who had witnessed this, the men watching from the hospital recognized what had gone down. They had found Olivia's weapon. Given that it had been involved in a fire, they had to be careful with handling it in case it discharged, which explained the reinforced containers. They knew NYPD had taken custody of the weapon until they knew exactly what the provenance was. There was suspicion amongst the police, firefighters, and paramedics that the woman was an NYPD officer based on what artifacts had been recovered combined with the gun.

The camera's view switched back over to the ambulance just in time to see the paramedics loading Liv into the bus and slamming the doors. The video ended with the sound of sirens screaming and lights flashing.

The news anchor returned to the screen. "As we learned in the video, the driver whose identity is being withheld pending notification of the next of kin, passed away at the scene. We were informed by authorities on the scene that it was possible the passenger of the taxi was a member of the NYPD. We have been unable to confirm that report, and as yet it is our understanding that she remains unidentified in critical condition at Mercy General Hospital. I'm sure all of our prayers and well-wishes go to her and her loved ones at this time.

"Coming up after the break, how about those Yankees...?"

The sound cut off and picture faded away as Captain Cragen switched off the TV that had given fuel to future nightmares.

Just as he was about to say something, anything that might tear their minds away from what they had seen, the doors leading to the OR corridor opened. A weary looking man in scrubs and a fresh surgical gown approached.

"Are any of you here regarding Olivia Benson?"

Elliot leapt to his feet, approaching the man before any of the other three even had a chance to process what the man had asked.

"Yes! My name is Elliot Stabler, and I have medical power of attorney for her."

"Mr. Stabler," the man stuck out his hand to shake, which Elliot quickly reciprocated, "my name is Dr. Lewis Jones and I was the lead surgeon working on Ms. Benson, along with several other surgeons.

"I'm not sure how much you know about how her injuries were sustained, but I can tell you they are extensive. Before I go over any of that though, I want you to know she's currently stable, in critical condition in the ICU. I like to lead with that because people don't really listen or pay attention to anything else until they know that.

"Ms. Benson presented to us with a Grade 3 subdural hematoma, which is essential bleeding in her brain. Our chief neurosurgeon addressed that as best as could be done. He managed to stop the bleed, however there was substantial brain swelling, which is not totally out of the norm for this type of injury. In order to give the brain room to swell without causing damage, he had to remove one of the top sections of her skull. He placed a catheter that will allow us to continually monitor the intracranial pressure. If the pressure rises, he may want to go back in and remove the other half of the top of her skull. He's optimistic though that won't be necessary.

"Moving down from the brain, she has a fractured jaw. We will be wiring it in place in the coming days, but right now we are securing it in place with bandages. Because of the jaw, it was decided to switch from oral intubation to a tracheotomy to maintain her airway.

"Regarding the respiratory system, she had a collapsed lung that we reinflated by placing a tube to drain off the fluid that was compressing the lung. She also had a torn diaphragm that I was able to repair. We have her on a ventilator to give her system a chance to rest and heal.

"On our pre-op scans, we saw several serious internal injuries in her abdomen. The most urgent of those being an abdominal aortic aneurysm that was dangerously swollen, and in fact ruptured on the table, and her spleen was mangled beyond repair.

"The spleen has a high blood flow to it, and with it being torn in two, she lost a lot of blood into her belly. We were able to remove the spleen and tie off the vessels that had supplied it.

"The abdominal aortic aneurysm ended up being the most serious thing we dealt with today. You may or may not know, but the aorta is the largest artery in the body, and is responsible for distributing oxygenated blood throughout the body. If there is any sort of injury to the aorta it can result in the patient bleeding out in a matter of minutes. Due to the force of the trauma Ms. Benson experienced, her aorta was severely compromised and began to swell and bulge at this newly weakened section of the vessel. When we opened her up, the vessel started dissecting right before our eyes. We were prepared for such an eventuality based on our pre-op scans and our chief cardiologist initiated a graft repair. While she had the artery clamped off at both ends and sewed in the graft, Ms. Benson's heart rhythm became irregular, resulting in ventricle fibrillation. Basically the ventricle was quivering instead of pumping blood. To restore rhythm to her heart, we had to use an internal defibrillator to get it beating properly again. It took us two attempts to restore rhythm.

"At that point, Dr. Stevens continued with the repair, and she sewed in a new graft, as well as grafts reinforcing areas above and below the ruptured section." Doctor Jones thought that at this point that it would not be prudent to discuss the failure of the graft that had almost caused her to bleed out.

"It was shortly thereafter that Ms. Benson's temperature began to drop into a hypothermic state. This is often the first stage of a process called the Triad of Death."

Elliot and the others looked at the doctor with wide, horrified eyes, and Elliot choked out a sob.

"It sounds scary, and it is, but we went into the operating room prepared for that situation and with a plan on how to handle it if it ended up happening.

"We started pushing warm fluids and placing warming blankets around accessible areas to try and arrest the hypothermia before it led into the second stage, which is a failure of the body's coagulation system, resulting in uncontrolled bleeding. It was at this point that our general surgeon was removing the spleen and we were alerted that she had blood coming from her nose and IV site.

"This meant she was in the second stage. Our plan going in was that if she reached the second stage of the triad, we would implement damage control protocol. Basically that means fixing only the most urgent issues, and leaving that which can be addressed later alone.

"We did implement damage control at that point. Thankfully, we were able to address the most serious issues before her body started failing. But she still has numerous internal injuries that will need to be addressed, so we have left her open. Her torso is wrapped in a tight pressure bandage, which combined with the absorbent sponges we packed her with, should see her through the next couple days until we can go in again. We prefer to give patients 48 hours 'rest' after damage control before we resume operating. It gives them a better chance of not flirting with the triad again.

"That essentially sums up what we were able to do for her today. As for the next several days, we will look to addressing her multiple fractures and lacerations, her other abdominal injuries, and getting that jaw wired. She's going to have a long, difficult road, but as of right now, we are cautiously optimistic that she will pull through."

Elliot let out a breath he didn't know he had been holding; Captain Cragen seemed to sag into himself in relief; Fin grinned and gripped Munch's shoulder; and Munch had his smile turn into a grimace as Fin gripped his shoulder harder.

"Can we...can we see her?," Elliot asked in a quiet, almost timid manner, so unlike his usual self.

"Yes, but only one at a time, and only for 10 minutes each. Remember, what you are going to see will be difficult to process. You will see the ventilator, the central line we placed, the numerous monitors and pumps keeping track of her vitals and administering fluids and medication. You will see her head bandaged thickly at the top of her head to protect her brain since it is exposed until the swelling subsides and we can replace that section of her skull. You'll see bandages on both sides of her face and supporting her chin to stabilize her jaw. You will see bruises, cuts, and swelling. Her face is much more swollen than it was when the nurse took that picture of her. You may not be able to recognize her. And you will see that pressure bandage that protects her open chest and abdomen.

"You will see all these things and you will probably be horrified, but don't hold on to, or focus on those things. Focus on the fact that she's still alive. She's fighting. She hasn't given up. She is still breathing. Focus on that."

**A/N 2: Whew! Sorry I took longer than I liked to update. I actually had the first third of this chapter written and then my health derailed me a bit. But hopefully, this makes up for the delay! Probably the longest chapter I've ever written. It just flowed out. Next chapter we will pay some visits to poor Olivia. **


	7. Chapter 7: Olivia, Interrupted

**Disclaimer: Still don't have any rights to SVU. Wish I did though. This plot is mine and that's about it.**

**A/N: Whew! Last chapter was a behemoth, right? It just wrote itself. Once again, thanks for the reviews and private messages. I appreciate them more than you can know. I'd probably write this story anyway for my own sanity to get it out of my head at night, but reviews motivate me to actually go the extra mile on descriptions. I could write 'the taxi was t-boned on both sides, the driver was dead and Olivia was seriously injured' and I could picture the scene clearly because it's in my head and I'd be happy with that. But I want you guys to see it as clearly as I do; to feel like you're actually watching an episode instead of reading a story. And your reviews push me to make the story immersive, especially on those days when I need to get the next bit of the story out of my head, but my body and mind are so tired that I just want to write something simple. So, again, from the bottom of my heart, I thank you. **

**Now, let's go visit Liv, shall we?**

SVU-SVU-SVU-SVU-SVU-SVU-SVU-SVU-SVU-SVU-SVU-SVU-SVU-SVU-SVU-SVU-SVU-SVU

**Chapter 7: Olivia, Interrupted**

**Mercy General Hospital**

**Intensive Care Unit**

It was decided amongst the four men present that Captain Cragen would visit first, followed by Fin and Munch, and finally Elliot. Elliot felt like he needed more time to gather his thoughts on what exactly he wanted to say to Liv. Even though she was unconscious and he would probably have to say it all again, he needed to tell her what happened, why, and how he felt about her. They say that coma patients can sometimes hear what's going on around them, and Elliot wanted to tell Olivia everything, just in case he would never be able to speak with her again.

Captain Cragen cautiously entered Olivia's room. The doctor had told them what they would see and warned them to brace themselves, but nothing could truly prepare a person for actually seeing it.

Olivia's figure could barely be discerned amongst all the equipment keeping her alive, and the bandages and wrappings obscuring her many injuries. There was the tube in her throat connected to the ventilator which whirred with every breath it gave her. There was the central line peeking out at the top of her chest, connected to no fewer than four IV pumps providing her with medication, fluids, and nutrition. She had all manner of wires monitoring her brain waves, her heart rate, her blood pressure, her intracranial pressure, her oxygen saturation, and a couple more things that he couldn't figure out but he figured were an essential part of the mission to keep Olivia alive and bring them back to her.

There were bulky bandages around an arm and a leg, probably temporarily bracing the fractures that the doctor said would be addressed in a future surgery. There was the thick bandage covering the top of her head where the surgeon said part of her skull had been removed. There were the bandages wrapped around the sides of her head and her chin, to keep her jaw in place until it could be wired shut. There was the cervical neck collar keeping her cervical spine aligned.

Cragen's attention was then drawn to perhaps the scariest thing of all—the pressure bandage covering the massive open incision to protect her organs until she was stable enough for the surgeons to go back in and fix more of her injuries and close her up.

Each of these things alone would've been intimidating, even to a hardened career officer, but combined they were practically overwhelming. He felt tears springing to his eyes as he looked upon his favorite detective, wondering if she would survive, let alone recover completely.

He sat down in the chair next to her bed, awkwardly placed amongst the machines supporting Liv's life. He grasped what appeared to be the sole part of her that wasn't injured, her right hand.

"Liv," he said thickly, choking his tears back, "it's Don. I always hoped that I'd never visit any of my squad in this condition, let alone from a car crash. I would've expected a line of duty injury. Not this. Never this.

"The doctors are doing all that they can to save your life. Now, you have to do your part. You need to fight with all the fierce determination and tenacity that I've seen from you over the years. You are one of the strongest people I've ever met to be able to deal with the things you've seen, the things you've heard, and the things you've endured. Please, Olivia, use that strength inside of you.

"You might not realize this, but you are truly the heart of this unit. Your compassion for the victims, your dedication to catching the perp, your ability to adapt to changes, and your friendship with your colleagues—all of these things you bring to the unit, and you make us all better because of it.

"I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Out of all the detectives that I've worked alongside and that I've supervised, you are my favorite. You know that my wife and I were never able to have children, but I had had a daughter, I would've wanted her to be just like you.

"Liv," he choked out, "To me, you are the daughter I never had, and you can't leave us; leave me. No parent should have to bury your child, and I don't think I could bear it if we had to bury you. I love you. Come back to us, Olivia, please."

—

_Olivia was wandering in a thick fog. She had no idea how she had gotten there or if she was alone. It was eerie and kind of comforting at the same time. Everything is so busy in her city and in her life. It was nice to be able to shroud herself in this mist, reveling in the silence. On the other hand, this murky forest she was aimlessly traipsing around in seemed to have no end and no beginning. It just was. Like an infinite plain of opaque grey surroundings. She felt lost. Why was she in this oblivion? How could she get out?_

_Vaguely, the deafening silence was broken by the slightest sounds. Somewhere there was a rhythmic beep. Olivia ran through the forest, stumbling over fallen trees, wondering why her heart and lungs were burning so much, trying to locate the source of the beeping. She felt that if she found that, she could find her way out._

_Then, she heard the fluttering whisper of words. They didn't make sense to her, and they seemed to come in uneven intervals. She strained to hear them, to make sense of what she was hearing. Perhaps someone else was in the forest and she could find her way to them._

—_Doctors...save...fight...Olivia...— Was the other person working a case with her? Had she been separated from him, for it was clearly a male's voice, one she felt she recognized? Olivia wracked her brain trying to unite the voice with a face, a name. She caught some more words. heart...(does that have something to do with the pain in her chest when she was running?) —friendship...detectives...supervised...— A flash of recognition blazed across her mind. It was Captain Cragen. Why on earth was the Captain out in the field? Did it have to do with the fog? Was that making it essential to have someone on scene to command a search?_

_Olivia's head began to throb and bursts of intense pain brought her to her knees. The best she could relate the pain to was if an ice pick was stabbed into her brain. She wanted to vomit, felt like she was going to, but when she opened her mouth and bent over to expel whatever she had in her stomach, she became aware that something was off with her stomach. It was like her stomach had forgotten how to throw up and instead was trying to tear itself apart to relieve the nausea. The pain was so intense. She wanted to scream, to get Cragen's attention, but she couldn't get her voice to work. If she had thought the forest was eerie and a bit intimidating before, she was now very frightened that nobody would find her through the dense fog and that she would die alone._

_As she felt darkness begin to overwhelm her, she head a few more words. They, too, didn't make much sense, but for some reason they provided comfort at a time when she needed it. —favorite...daughter...love you...Olivia...— Then, everything went black and silence again fell around her._

His allotted ten minutes up, Captain Cragen left Liv's room and retreated to the ICU waiting room, where Fin, Elliot, and Munch had decamped once he had gone in to her room.

As he walked into the room, he saw the others look up, hoping for some good news, only to be faced with his haggard appearance. His eyes were rid-rimmed, his shoulders were slumped, and his clothing was rumpled, but no more so than those of the men sharing his vigil.

At their questioning looks, he slightly shook his head as he said, "there was no change in her condition while I was in there.

"It was every bit of difficult as the doctor said it would be to see everything. It was actually beyond what I had imagined. I'd once again reiterate to brace yourselves, but I honestly don't think there's any way that you could truly prepare yourself for what you will see.

"But don't let that put you off from going in there. I know we don't know if she can hear what we say to her, but even if she can't, talking to her has given me a bit of comfort, as I'm sure it will to you."

The others nodded at the wisdom of the Captain's words. They reaffirmed their commitment to visiting her, no matter how difficult it would be to see her like that. Fin and Munch looked over at Elliot to see if he was ready to go next, but he just shook his head slightly as he looked down and put a hand up, signaling that he wasn't quite there yet.

"Well, Munch, it's you or me up next. Whatcha think?," Fin asked his long-time partner.

"If you don't mind, I think you should go next," said John as he nodded his head over towards Elliot as he kept eye contact with Fin. He understood that to mean that Munch was volunteering to take the first 'shift' of Elliotwatch with Captain Cragen. They didn't know what Elliot might do if left alone.

Fin nodded his agreement to Munch's unspoken communication, and met the understanding eyes of the Captain standing behind Elliot's seat. He quietly slipped from the waiting area and disappeared into the Intensive Care Unit.

After stopping at the Nurse's station to get Liv's room number, while inwardly cursing himself for not getting it from Cragen, he ventured down the hall towards her room. Upon finding the correct room, he took a moment to center himself before he went inside. Like the other rooms in this unit, the doors were sliding glass, allowing complete visual of the room from the hall, which he knew allowed easier monitoring of the patients for the nurses and doctors. But, it also allowed him to see what he would be walking in to before he actually went in. If Liv could truly hear them, he didn't want her to hear his initial reaction.

After ascertaining that he was ready to go in, he took a deep breath and slid open the door just enough to admit him into the room, and let it slowly slide closed behind him. Fin walked over to that same chair that the Captain had occupied just a few minutes earlier, and just as the Captain had done, he sat down and reached for Olivia's hand.

"Hey, Baby Girl. It's Fin. You're quite a sight to see right now, you know? You have all sorts of machines, and tubes, and wires hooked up to you. But that's okay, you know? Because it means you're still here with us.

"We've had each others' back for awhile now, you and me. You saved my life in that bodega and I'm not even sure if I ever thanked you for it. I think you felt guilty, but Liv, I am glad that it was me that got shot in that store. If it had been you...well, I probably would've left SVU.

"You see, you're the glue that keeps us all together. You are the interchangeable piece that works well with everybody. Your drive to help the victims helps all of us to remember exactly why we do what we do. You keep us focused on the victims and not the horrors of dealing with the sick perps who committed those atrocities.

"I shouldn't have left you alone at Sealview. I shoulda done more to protect you. I don't know if you'll ever know how much I regret not getting down to that basement sooner. And once I saw what was happening, and figured out what had been happening before I got there, I shoulda done more to support you. You support everyone else; how could none of us see how much you needed our support then? I'm sorry, Liv, so sorry about that.

"I don't think anybody woulda blamed you if you had left SVU at that point. Going from the victim's champion to being a sexual assault victim yourself had to have been tough to deal with. But you managed to overcome that hurdle, and came out stronger for it. I admire that about you.

"So now, Liv, you gotta redirect that inner strength, and fight your way back to us. SVU needs you to hold us together. The victims need you to be their strongest advocate. The city needs you to catch the perps, protecting the people and getting justice for the victims. And I need you, Baby Girl. You may be Badass Benson, fully capable of taking care of yourself, but that doesn't change how I feel; you are like a sister to me. You are family. Love you, Liv."

Fin pressed a kiss against her knuckles and gently set her hand back down on the bed. He slipped from the room as quickly and silently as he entered, but this time he let the tears he held back before fall unchecked down his face.

_Olivia clawed her way out of the hole she must've tripped over as she wandered. Once out of the dark, dark hole, she once again found herself in the boundless forest with the dense grey fog. She shivered a bit. The air was a bit chillier than it had been when she fell. She took stock of her body, vaguely remembering the pain she had felt before she fell. Was that why she fell? Or did she feel the pain because she fell? She couldn't think, couldn't remember, her mind was as hazy as the mists around her. She was so confused as to what was going on. _

_After assessing how she felt, she was relieved that most of the pain, while not gone, was dulled. She could push through this pain. She needed to if she was ever going to make it out of this damn forest._

_Once again, she became aware of faint echoes of sound. But these were not the sounds of the woods that she expected. These were... She struggled to find the word to describe what she was hearing. Her brain would just not cooperate. Why was this so hard? She felt so heavy and tired. She just wanted to curl up and sleep. That's what she needed. She needed to stop trying to find her way through the forest and just sleep. Just the very thought of succumbing to the warm embrace of the sandman was enough to stop trudging through the woods. As she looked around for the best place to sleep, she thought she could once again hear faint echoes, but this time it was a voice._

_It wasn't the same voice as she had heard before she fell; it wasn't the Captain. But she knew this voice, too. Her tired mind sluggishly brought up an image of the owner of that voice. _Fin._ She knew it had to be Fin. But why was he out there? Was he with Cragen? Were they all out there on this mission, whatever it was? She grew increasingly frustrated as her attempts to make out entire sentences was just as futile as it had been when she heard Cragen._

—_Baby girl...still here...saved...—They must be in these woods searching for a little girl. Olivia was confused though. Was the child still here or had she been saved? She continued to try and hear the words, though she had to admit they were getting fainter as grew increasingly tired._

—_guilty...shot...SVU...glue...victims...alone...Sealview...— Liv's drooping eyes snapped open at that. What did Sealview have to do with this, whatever this is? She felt tremors through her body as images of the basement flitted through her mind. _

—_support...sorry...Liv...stronger...fight...advocate...protect...Badass Benson...— Once again, she struggled to make sense of the words. Some of them clearly referenced her. She smiled faintly to herself at the Badass Benson moniker. But what about the others? And why is Fin saying all this during a case? Her vision began to dim again, as the pain in her head rapidly amped up from its previous dull ache. _

_What was wrong with her? Why couldn't she find her way through this damn fog?_

_Faintly, as if whispering carried on a light breeze, she heard the only words that made any sense. Liv gasped as she tried to fight through the pain to hold on to those words._

—_You are like a sister to me...You are family...Love you...Liv...—_

_Family. She had never had a family, not really. It warmed her heart even as the chill in the air increased. They were the last words she heard before the pain throughout her body overwhelmed her already fatigued mind, and then a faint rapid beeping sound as she fell back into utter darkness, insensate to everything around her. _

As Fin was leaving the ward to return to the waiting room, he heard an alarm at the nurse's station, followed by commotion as people went running into the room he had just left. Liv's room. His eyes widened and he felt adrenaline course through him as his heart began racing and his stomach felt like it dropped all the way to the ground. As unobtrusively as possible, he walked back towards her room, making sure to stay out of the way of the medical personnel scrambling to address whatever had happened to raise an alarm.

"Someone page Dr. Lewis Jones and Dr. Stevens, stat!"

"Call the code!" Fin heard the words Code Blue over the hospital's address system, and a light over Liv's door began flashing blue.

"I can't find a pulse. Rhythm is in V-tach. Push 150mg Amiodarone and prepare for synchronized cardioversion."

"Okay, Amiodarone is in. Electrodes placed in proper positions."

"Let's set the defibrillator to SYNC. Okay, it's picking up the R wave, so we are ready to go."

"Clear!"

"How's the rhythm?"

"Still tachy. No pulse."

"Okay, press SYNC again. Ready, clear!"

"We've got a pulse!"

"Looks like we have sinus rhythm!"

"Alright, other vitals look stable. Blood pressure is holding steady."

"Drs., Miss Benson went into pulseless ventricular tachycardia. We pushed 150 of Amiodarone and performed two rounds of synchronized cardioversion. After the second round, we were able to get a pulse and restore a stable sinus rhythm. Blood pressure and all other vitals remained steady throughout."

Fin then heard a voice he recognized, that of Dr. Jones, the surgeon who had briefed them earlier, "Alright, looks like this crisis has been averted. We'll need to continue to closely monitor her. This is not out of the norm for someone with this much trauma. I don't think it's anything that we need to risk taking her back into the OR to address. Do you agree, Dr. Stevens?"

"Yes, sir. I agree. Her body is still in shock, especially given the damage control protocol. There will probably be a couple more of these episodes, at least, until we can get back in there and address her other injuries. It's vital that we have the drugs and equipment at the ready to address any future occurrences. But, I am fairly certain that this doesn't have anything to do with the graft or anything else we went in on earlier."

"Alright, I'll go give an update to her friends. Good job, everybody."

Fin saw the curtain that had been drawn across the glass doors and windows rustling, and then the doctor emerged. He saw Fin across the hallway, and motioned for him to join him as they walked out to the waiting room.

"Are you alright?," he asked kindly. "It can be very difficult to witness that sort of situation with a loved one."

"Yeah, I'll okay. But will she?," Fin asked.

"I'm afraid I can't give you any more answers than I did earlier. It's going to be a hard road for all of us: you, us as her medical team, and especially her. We will just have to keep on top of anything that happens. The sooner we address any problems, the better the outcome will be for her."

By then, the two men had reached the waiting room. Elliot, Munch, and the Captain all jumped to their feet when they saw the doctor emerging with Fin. They had heard the Code Blue call go out thirty minutes earlier, and when Fin hadn't come back after his ten minutes were up, they concluded that the call was for Olivia.

They anxiously searched the faces of the two men, one whom they knew well, and the other who held Olivia's life in his hands, seeking out any sign that might indicated what had happened. They had been afraid the worst had happened, but upon seeing Fin's face, they relaxed minutely. If the worst had happened, Fin's face would've broadcast more emotion than the same signs of distress that he had worn before he went to visit her.

"Okay, gentlemen. We've had a bit of a hiccup with Miss Benson; her heart accelerated into an irregular rhythm, and we briefly lost her pulse, but we were quickly able to stabilize her. Her vital signs are holding steady. She has a good heart rhythm now and we are going to continue to let her body rest before we go back in to the operating room. My cardio surgeon and I agree that this episode was nothing beyond the norm when a person is so severely injured. She may even have a couple more before she's stable enough for further surgery. We are prepared to address those episodes if/when they arise."

They let out a sigh of relief, and as one sat back down in their chairs. Elliot balled up his fist and brought it to his lips as he tried to fight back the tears that seemed to draw up from a bottomless well.

Dr. Jones smiled reassuringly at them. "Give us a few minutes to run her vitals again, and draw some more labs, and then you can resume visiting her."

"Are you sure?," asked Munch, "we won't be in the way or jeopardizing her recovery by overtaxing her?"

"No. If there is another episode, you'll hear the alarms, and in that case, we ask that you immediately exit the room and proceed back to the waiting room until we can come update you," he said as he gave Fin a sidelong look for remaining in the hallway, while Fin stared right on back, unashamed of his earlier actions. He knew he had been out of the way the whole time, and he just needed to be there to hear the doctors and nurses, rather than out in the waiting room, with the worst case scenario constantly running through his mind.

"Being there, talking to her, is the exact opposite of overtaxing her. Patients in her condition fare much better when family and friends are there, supporting them, talking to them, even when there is absolutely no indication that the patients are aware of their surroundings. You should talk to her, tell her not to give up, tell her you're there for her and that she has lots of people pulling for her. Patient recovery is partly due to medical care but just as important is the patient's will to fight and their internal strength to endure the battle. So far, she's shown us that she is quite a fighter; you need to remind her that there is something to keep fighting for."

"Thank you doctor," Munch said quietly. He looked over at his comrades in this vigil, and said, "well, I guess it's my turn at the wheel. Any advice, Captain? Fin?"

"Naw, man, just go in there and talk to her. I pretended that I was just talking to her like normal, only telling her the things that I had never told her and probably should've. She doesn't look like our Liv, though. Even without all the stuff around her, it's like looking at her through one of those funhouse mirrors, where everything is distorted. That equipment, though, is intimidating. You just gotta block it out. I stood outside the door to her room, observing through the glass, before I went in there. It really helped me to steady myself to go in there and talk to her like we were shooting the breeze in the squad room," advised Fin.

John nodded in understanding and turned to walk the path that Cragen and Fin had trod before. Once in front of Olivia's room, Munch took Fin's advice to take everything in before going in the room. It took a lot to fluster the veteran detective, but he felt like if had gone in there without preparation, he would have been completely flummoxed.

Having taken in everything that there was to see, he took a deep breath and entered the room.

Like his predecessors, he spied the chair meant for visitors. Unlike when Cragen and Fin had been in the room, it had been shuffled away from the bed, as the code team had worked to reset Olivia's heart rhythm. But Munch knew nothing of how the chair had been placed, so he assumed it was exactly the same placement for the other two. Therefore, he took his seat, a few feet farther away from Liv than they had sat.

The distance didn't bother Munch. He had always been much less demonstrative than his colleagues. His fellow SVU detectives could probably count on one hand the number of times that he had lost some semblance of control, and when he had, it was always very restrained compared to, say, Elliot's explosiveness.

Once he sat down, he placed the ankle of one leg over the knee of the other leg, and folded his hands at his waist.

"You know, Liv, I had my doubts about you when you first came to SVU. I wasn't sure your personality was suited to handling the things we handle. If you had asked me when you transferred in who I thought would be gone from the unit in a year's time, I would've said you, without hesitation.

"But you proved me wrong. You outlasted Cassidy. You outlasted Jeffries. You put up with Stabler's nonsense for over a decade. I never would've thought that possible. How is it that I've had three partners in the same time period that you had just the one? An argument could be made that you're much easier to work with than I am, I suppose, but I don't think that's what it is. There's something about you, Liv, that centers all those around you. I can't quite put my finger on what it is.

"I remember back to that first year, when I didn't know your history, and I said something about why would anyone keep the child of a rape, and you played it off to assuage the awkwardness in the room while I took my foot out of my mouth. Considering I know now how much your origins matter to you, I am amazed at the grace you displayed in brushing it off.

"I'd like to thank you and Stabler for being a constant source of amusement for me over the years. Between your nearly constant bickering and the unresolved sexual tension that was obvious to everyone but the two of you, I was always entertained.

"Liv, I think you're an amazing detective, a loyal colleague, and an even better friend. The world would be a darker place without you walking amongst us, seeking justice for those that are the most vulnerable. Our lives would be darker without your friendship. You are a guiding light, a beacon, preventing people from smashing into the rocks. If that light is extinguished, what then will guide those who are lost into a safe harbor?

"So, you have to fight. Fight with everything you have in you, and then fight some more. Draw strength from us, the people who love you, and would do anything for you. I'm going to give you an incentive, in case living wasn't enough. If, no, when you recover, I promise to never discuss one of my so-called 'conspiracy theories' around you. You'll probably be the honey that draws the bees and keeps them buzzing around you, just so they can avoid hearing me spout off.

"Take care of yourself, Liv. I will see you soon."

With that, Munch unfolded his lanky form out of the chair, and with one last lingering look at Olivia, he left the room.

Ugh_, Olivia thought to herself, as she once again clambered out of yet another hole. _What is wrong with this stupid forest? Why are there so many damn holes in the ground? And why do I keep falling into them? What is the matter with me?

_Once out of the hole, she noticed that she felt weaker than she had before she fell. Not that she had been feeling all that strong before. She wondered, not for the first time, how long she had been wandering through this accursed wood with its oppressive fog. Unable to see the position of the sun through the murky fog, she had little idea what time it was, much less what day it was. _

_Once again she thought she could make out the soft, steady beep that she had heard a few times before. She cocked her head and thought that it sounded better and less alarming than it had before she fell down that last hole. It was kind of comforting to hear that beep. She wasn't sure where it was coming from, or if it was a complete figment of her imagination, but she felt like perhaps seeking out the source of the beeping might help her figure out the mystery of this forest and how to get out of it._

_Her mind made up, Olivia staggered to her feet, something that took more energy than she ever remembered it taking. Her vision blurred for a few seconds as she gathered her bearings. There was a pulsing whooshing sound in her head so she tried bending over and hanging her head to see if that would help, but if anything, it made it worse. She made a mental note to herself not to bow her head. She took a deep breath, recognizing by now the intense burning sensation brought on by such an action, and slowly straightened herself back up. But she just couldn't bring herself to stand up straight with the proud confidence she had always displayed before. She was just so, so, so tired. _

_She looked ahead, looking for any thinning of the hazy veil cloaking the woods around her. She found none. Just a never ending view of the black shadows of the trees and the dense fog that became more and more frightening the longer she was hidden in it. She despaired of ever finding her way out, and had little more hope that anyone would find her. She had heard the Captain, and she had heard Fin, but their voices were gone now; they had moved away and for all she knew had abandoned the search. She had decided that *she* was the mission that everyone was in the woods for because of those few snippets of words that she had caught. It was those words that gave her hope that they wouldn't give up on finding her, so she couldn't give up on getting herself out. _

—_favorite...daughter...love you...Olivia...—_

—_You are like a sister to me...You are family...Love you...Liv...—_

_She wrapped her arms around herself, trying to figure out why she didn't have a jacket. She always had a jacket. She certainly would've never gone trekking in a creepy forest hidden by some unnatural fog without a jacket. She shivered as she felt a breeze stir around her. But then she stilled, her tremors ceasing as she paid no more attention to the cold, focusing instead on what else the breeze had brought besides the cold._

_Another voice. Another pang of familiarity. Another flame of hope flaring in her chest. _

_Munch. It was Munch. She was as sure of it as she was that she was mired in this foggy forest._

_Annoyingly, his voice also came across in staccato bursts. She wondered why a full sentence couldn't drift through the mists. It would make things so much clearer for her, she was sure. Another wave of fatigue threatened to overwhelm her. She surveyed her immediate surroundings, trying to ascertain if the land was free of any more of those deep holes she kept falling into. Satisfied that the ground around her appeared solid, she wearily sank down against a tree, and pulled her legs up so she could rest her head on her knees, while her ears sought out those whispers._

—_Liv...I...doubts...you...gone...wrong...Stabler...— The fog in her brain that was beginning to mirror the landscape around her thinned a bit at that last word, a word, no—a name—that she hadn't heard in over a year. Before she could work out what exactly what that meant to her, the foggy curtain had once again dropped over her mind's eye._

—_partners...argument...Liv...centers...you...origins...amazed...grace...thank...Stabler...— There it was again! She struggled to remember the significance of that name. And it had to be significant she reasoned, if her tired, confused brain kept grasping at it, and flagging when it slipped back into the murkiness. _

—_amusement... bickering... sexual tension... obvious... entertained...—_

_Olivia could feel herself blushing as she hugged her knees to her chest. She wasn't entirely sure but she had a feeling that Munch was talking about her and Stabler. As she thought the name, a face formed in her mind, reminding her who exactly Stabler was. It was Elliot. Everything about him and their time together flooded back, threatening to short-circuit her already frayed synapses. How could she have forgotten? Not a day had gone by in the past 18 months that she hadn't thought about him, wondered how he was doing, and seeking to understand why he had left her. She once again felt that familiar pang of betrayal, heartache, loneliness, and despair that had emotionally wrecked her when he left. But just as quickly as it came, it was gone. Her body, her mind, and her spirit were just too tired to dwell on him any longer. Her quickly fading focus shifted again to Munch's whispers._

—_darker...without you...justice...vulnerable...guiding light...extinguished...lost...safe harbor—_

_Olivia pictured a lighthouse, beckoning to her. She struggled to interpret whether it was real or a delusion, and then decided it didn't matter. She was never going to reach it, neither in body nor in soul. She was tired and the pain in her body started to mirror that of the pain in her head. She wasn't sure how much longer she could hold out for a rescue, and she felt like she had no more energy stores to draw upon so she could rescue herself...or at least meet her rescuers halfway._

_As she faded, she suddenly heard John's words clearer than ever before, actually capturing full phrases, if not sentences. Did that mean they were closer to finding her? A weak, flickering flame of hope flared up inside of her. She slowly lifted her heavy head and turned tired eyes on her surroundings. _

—_...fight. Fight with everything you have..., and then fight some more. Draw strength from us, the people who love you... an incentive... I promise to never discuss...conspiracy theories... —_

_Olivia wanted to slam her head against her knees but she barely had enough energy to lay it down softly. She wanted to cry but crying seemed like a Herculean task. Munch's voice had once again faded to whispers flitting by carried on a breeze._

_Her vision started to blacken on the outer edges and she could barely make out these last words._

—_...take care...Liv...see you soon...—_

_Olivia finally allowed herself to fall into the beckoning darkness, but did so with a smile on her face. They were going to find her and she would fight to do her part and meet them halfway. For now, she just needed to rest._

John returned to the waiting room, pleased to be able to report that Olivia was in the same condition when he left as when he went in, unlike when Fin visited her.

"You're right," he said to the two had gone before him, "it was horrible to see, but it really helped to talk with her, to tell her all the things that nobody says until it's too late."

With a deep breath, Elliot wiped his face and stood up.

"Thank you, all of you, for sticking by Liv these past eighteen months, for having her back when I...I couldn't. And thank you for not excoriating me for my mistakes. I do have an explanation to give you, but I think there's someone else who needs to hear it first. So, if you'll please excuse me, I need to begin the first of many, I'm sure, groveling sessions."

With a nod at each of the other three men, Elliot straightened his shoulders and went down the hall, ready to come face to face with one of his worst nightmares—Olivia fighting for her very life and not being able to do anything to save her.

As Fin and Munch had done before him, he stood outside her room, letting his eyes roam over each and every piece of equipment that was sustaining her life. From outside the room, the figure on the bed looked so small, dwarfed by the machines surrounding her bed. It was hard reconciling that image with the strong, fit, confident, badass woman who had stood by his side, watching his back as he watched hers, for twelve years.

He looked up to the ceiling and prayed to the Lord and every saint he could think of that they restore Olivia to health. And then he walked in.

**A/N 2: Apologies for yet another delay. Real life has been crazy the past couple weeks. But I've been plugging and plugging away at this chapter, trying to capture in words the way I see it in my mind. Sorry for the cliffhanger. I had originally wanted to include Elliot's 'confession/prayer' as well as Liv's dreamscape understanding of what is going on around her as relates to Elliot's speech. But, this chapter was delayed long enough, and this seemed to be a good place to leave off before we journey even deeper into Olivia's misty woods. And **_**mea culpa**_** for any typos or mistakes there may be. "It's 2am and I'm still awake, writing a (story), If I get it all down on paper, it's no longer inside of me, threatening the life it belongs to..."**

**And yet another plea from the junkie that lurks inside of me: Reviews please! **


	8. Chapter 8: Little Girl Lost

_**A/N: **_A million apologies. My intention was to update every three days not every three months. I'll explain my absence in more detail next chapter (hopefully later today or tomorrow) but I really wanted to get this out ASAP. This is not what I thought the next chapter would be, but Liv woke me up this morning and pushed me in this direction to tell her story. And who am I to argue? (Disclaimer: still not mine)

_SVU-SVU-SVU-SVU-SVU-SVU-SVU-SVU-SVU-SVU-SVU-SVU-SVU-SVU-SVU-SVU-SVU-SVU-_

**Chapter 8: Little Girl Lost**

_At the bottom of a pit, '_Where were these things coming from,' _Olivia wondered, _'and why aren't I seeing them **before** I fall to the bottom of them?', _Liv lay still. Every single part of her was screaming in pain. She wanted to open her eyes, clamber out of yet another one of these godforsaken holes, and seek out the voices in the mist, but no matter how much she tried, the most she could manage was to slit her eyes open. It was just enough to confirm that yes, she was at the bottom of a pit; yes, it's still as misty as ever, probably even more so—the air was practically opaque; and no, there was nobody there to help her. _

_She was alone. '_As usual,' _her mind supplied, unkindly. _

_Liv prided herself on her independence, a hard-won character trait developed from years of living with an erratically temperamental alcoholic mother. Little Olivia—Livvy, as she had called herself—never knew which face her mother would wear at any time. Would it be the happy face with smiles in her eyes matching the ones on her lips; the face that was always willing to help Livvy do something or show her something? Or would it be the sad face with tears constantly falling over every time those eyes landed on Livvy; the face that told Livvy somehow she made her mommy very sad and Livvy would do whatever she could to make up for it? Or would the face be twisted, from hate, rage, disgust, or alcohol or some combination thereof; the face where the lips sometimes curled in something resembling a smile but the eyes were hard and cruel, and harsh words were spewed out at Livvy, often accompanied by a slap or sometimes a kick or something thrown at Livvy's face? Livvy knew when she saw that face to make herself scarce and to do for herself what she could. It was a lesson learned when she was three and asked for dinner. She never saw the glass in her mother's hand until it hit her right above her right eye. The glass left a scar on her face and in her psyche. _

_For Livvy, self-preservation meant self-reliance. She became fiercely independent, something that caused no end of problems with meaningful relationships. She couldn't open herself completely, afraid to rely emotionally on anyone but herself for fear of reopening that old wound from childhood. The closest she ever allowed herself to become to anyone else was with Elliot and that had ended up almost ripping it open when he left. So, she retreated back into her hardened exterior, careful to not get that close to her new partner. _

_But now? Stuck at the bottom of some crazy pitfall in a foggy forest straight out of some horror film? Liv would gladly give up her cherished independence and welcome anybody who could help her get up, get out of the hole and these accursed woods, and get home. She wouldn't even put up a fight on being taken to the hospital. She knew she had some pretty serious injuries judging by the amount of pain she was feeling. Pain that just kept increasing by the second, especially in her head. She must've slammed her head into the ground in one or more of her falls. She peered up through her slitted eyes, judging the depth of this particular hole. It was by far the deepest one yet, and even if she wasn't hurting just about everywhere she figured she would've had a hard time getting out of there without assistance. A trickle of anxiety over her precarious situation coursed through her body. The only thing keeping full-fledged panic at bay was the fact that she had heard the voices of her Captain and of Munch and Fin. She was lost but not alone. They were looking for her. She closed her eyes so she could focus on the sounds of the woods around her, trying to suss out how close her would-be rescuers were. She heard something, _'a sniffle?'_ and then her whole body began to tingle in anticipation, like some sort of spidey-sense had kicked in, because she knew, somehow, that something was approaching her. She tried to force her eyes open and push some energy into her body to scramble away from this unknown threat, but nothing happened. She couldn't even get her eyes to slit open anymore. It was like they were glued shut. Forget about moving the rest of her body if she couldn't even flicker her eyelids. She could feel her pulse racing but oddly her lungs didn't seem to be working in concert with her heart because her breathing seemed just as steady and controlled as before. This pit must've been an animal trap and now she was about to be dinner for some wounded beast of the forest and she couldn't do a damn thing about it. _

_The thing was closer now, probably within inches of touching her, and all the hairs on her skin felt like they were standing on end, quivering with the knowledge that this was how it was going to end. She could hear the beast inhale a deep breath and then suddenly, the aforementioned hairs all settled down and her body's spidey-sense reaction ebbed away to be replaced with feelings of safety, security, contentment, happiness, and some other unfamiliar emotion that she couldn't quite label. _

'Was that it? Had it been that quick? Was death by mauling usually that merciful? I didn't even feel the bite,'_ Liv mused to herself. But then she realized she could still feel all the pain she had forgotten about in the wake of this scare, and she realized that she hadn't died, or even been attacked, so why did her body's natural alarm system turn itself off? And then she heard the exhale...she must've heard that same deep release of air a thousand times or more over the course of twelve years. _

_Elliot was here._

_SVU-SVU-SVU-SVU-SVU-SVU-SVU-SVU-SVU-SVU-SVU-SVU-SVU-SVU-SVU-SVU-SVU-SVU-_

A/N: Just a little interlude on Liv's side of the veil. She insisted. Longer chapter coming up, obviously, because El's got some 'splaining to do and Liv's still in quite the pickle, medically speaking...


	9. Chapter 9: Author, Interrupted

Author's Note.

Gosh. Has it really been 7 months since I last updated? Yikes.

First, let me say, I HAVE NOT abandoned this story and have absolutely zero intention of doing so. This is my baby. I have lots of dreams for it...which leads me into my first excuse, lol.

I am what is called a dream sculptor. Prior to falling asleep, I create the world I want to dream about (basically, I set the character(s) and a setting and a plot idea and think about it as I drift off, and then the story unfolds in my dreams. My subconscious directs it. Most days, I wake up remembering the events, if not the exact dialogue. This is how I write my stories. Well, back in late October, early November, every time I tried sculpting the dream to get this story to pour out of my mind, a different story kept popping in. It's also an E/O story (though completely different in style and genre) which I have now pounded out the first chapter, trying to get it out of my head to focus again on Road to Recovery. Then...along came my second excuse.

I have hinted (or possibly come right out and said it; I can't recall) of my mental health issues. I have Bipolar II syndrome and it has not been very well controlled...a big part of which comes from my lack of adherence to my medication, but also because the medication I take might not be the best for control, but is the best for me because I'm also a bariatric patient. I had a sleeve gastrectomy performed in April 2015, and lost over 100 pounds and got down to a US size 2/4. I do not want to gain that weight back, and unfortunately, most mood stabilizers have weight gain as a side effect, except the one I'm on (Lamotragine). So, it's a balancing act, literally. We tried increasing my dosage, but the higher dose literally had me walking into walls. I almost fell through the glass door to my shower. I am extremely accident-prone on my own; I don't need extra assistance from my meds, haha. I have just about every mobility aid except a wheelchair and electric scooter thanks to my many injuries over the years. So, we had to back it down. Well, in April, I finally got my EllieGrid pillbox in the mail (it was my Christmas gift from my brother and it was back ordered, probably because it is AH-MA-ZING, and also because of the plague known as COVID-19). It's a smart pillbox and it alerts me when it's time for my meds, lights up with exactly which ones I'm supposed to take at that time, and tracks my compliance so my doctor and I can better figure out the best treatment for me. So, I'm finally on a schedule. Yay! This has meant I have had fewer rapid cycling episodes. But I'm still cycling...and am currently in a prolonged hypomanic episode that has my mind racing with so many different thoughts and ideas and projects and goals that I'm literally overloaded and at a loss what to tackle first because my mind is giving them all priority. It's so frustrating to have all this hyped up productive energy and great ideas but unable to actually put anything into play. And then there have been the lows, where I just absolutely don't want to do anything beyond petting my cats. It just sucks. Where are my BPD2 peeps? I know y'all can probably sympathize! But anyway, onto my third and fourth excuses (which should be the last ones and are entangled together).

COVID-19, y'all. First, since January, I've been taking care of my 5 and 8 year old nieces after school because their mom went back to work after being a stay at home mom the past 6 years. It was only a few hours a day, but it still drained me of my energy (I'm also an introvert, lol). Well, along comes March and quarantine. The kids are out of school, but their mom and dad are still working their jobs full-time, but just from home. These kids are boisterous little girls who love to fight and the 8 year old has multiple behavioral/psychiatric problems (yay for mental illness genetics!), including ADHD, sensory processing disorder, and dysmorphic mood dysregulation disorder which is basically a severe form of oppositional defiant disorder (ODD). To put it very simply—she is very tetchy. You never know what will set her off and start the maelstrom of negativity and defiance. She needs routine. Having parents working doesn't give her the structure and routine she needs. Plus, at that point we all still operated under the belief that the kids would go back to school in a couple weeks and they would both need some sort of homeschool work to keep progressing in their grades (PreK and 2nd grade). So, because I'm on disability for a myriad of reasons, I got roped into being a babysitter/teacher for 8-10 hours a day. Huge adjustment for me, because my medical problems that keep me from working a regular job didn't just go away. But at any rate, the younger niece got sick in March. She spent a lot of the month with a cough and recurring high fever. Her pediatrician basically told us to keep doing the standard rest and fluids routine because they thought it was just the flu. After several days of a consistently high temperature, I took her to urgent care. Her flu test was negative and she was diagnosed with an "unknown acute respiratory virus". Our area had extremely limited COVID tests at the time (like you basically had to be dying on a ventilator to get tested) but it our belief that she had the virus...we say that because about 10 or so days later, I started getting sick. Dry cough, constant fever, occasions of shortness of breath—all the earmarks of COVID. I went to Urgent care and they still weren't doing COVID testing beyond hospitalized patients around here, but the doctor determined that based on my history (and my close contact with the little Typhoid Mary child) that I was presumed positive for COVID-19, in accordance with CDC and North Carolina Health and Human Services guidelines in place at the time. So, I was sent home with some cough medicine to quell the godawful cough, a contact tracing form to track all people I had been in close contact with in the time since right before I started showing symptoms, and orders to self-isolate. And that is how I spent the month of April. At home, cut off from the outdoors and people, unable to even go out to get my own food. Finally, at the end of April when more tests were available, the infectious disease team at my local Veteran's Affairs clinic (the Air Force is what broke me, haha, with some of my ailments) brought me in for the test. By that time, my cough had basically cleared, I wasn't getting short of breath, but I was still running a low grade fever that would break and then come back. To get out of isolation I had to have negative COVID testing or 72 hours consecutive free of any symptoms without the aid of medication. Got the test (oh and if you haven't had it, it's the worst thing—they stick the swag up your nose, but they have to stick it up so far it feels like they're trying to scrape some brain cells. My eyes were watering from that for thirty minutes after, lol). Once the results came back showing no active virus was left, I was free...to resume watching the kids. Dealing with them after dealing with COVID has been challenging and I just haven't had it in me to write...though I have been trying to dream sculpt this story or the other one that horned its way into my brain...and then I ended up with a third story in my head. The problem multiplies, haha.

But anyway, that's where we are. This "chapter" will be replaced once I get the next chapter out of the recesses of my brain, and have the energy to type it all up nice and pretty. It's a safe bet that the second story that I've developed for SVU will have the first chapter posted before anything else for this. Sorry for that. But hopefully, pushing these other stories out that while I think they'll be quite good aren't my baby, will allow me to once again focus on this.

Sorry for the extra long, extra special glimpse into my life, but I felt I really owed you guys the full story of my absence.

Oh, and FYI: the next story will most likely be titled Bedtime Stories: Reflections on a Life...I'll leave you guys to hypothesize what you think it'll be about...

Peace and love to all in these times of uncertainty, injustice, and discord.

~Kim


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